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By Afrosapiens, 1163 words.

Poverty has long been associated with educational under-achievement and various behavioral issues. Although the underlying causes of these differences have been at the center of a nature vs.. Nurture debate for decades, it’s only recently that insights from neuroscience have allowed better understanding of how poverty affects the brain. Observations from MRI scans show slower brain growth in children growing up in low SES households (poor and near-poor) which results in reduced volume and grey matter thickness in the frontal and parietal cortices as well as lower amygdala and hippocampus size. All those affected brain areas are crucial to learning and social functioning as they govern cognitive and executive functions such as language, working and long-term memory, attention, impulse control, emotional management and information processing.

Although research using animal experiments indicate that the relationship between poverty and altered brain development is causal, it is yet not clear which aspect of poverty impacts which function the most. The most cited factors are stress, trauma, low stimulation, poor child-parent relationship, poor nutrition and poor health. Although it is also possible that genetics play a role in individual susceptibility to these factors, the idea that genetic background cause people to be poor in the first place and then have their brains damaged by environmental factors is not supported by science and belongs to pseudo-Darwinian creationism, especially since such deficits appear to be reversible to a substantial degree due to brain plasticity.

Various interventions to improve or prevent decrease in cognitive and executive function have shown good and lasting results in reducing behavioral issues and increasing school performance and job market participation. Interventions can take various forms, first of all, since poverty is lack of financial resources, income supports to families with children are an obvious means of limiting children’s exposure to poverty-related adversity. Although this is absolute common sense, conservative ideologues have managed to convince a large part of the public that pro-poor policies would in fact be harmful to the needy whereas pro-rich ones would mysteriously benefit them.

Besides redistribution, executive function coaching in the form of computer or non-computer games, aerobic exercise and sports, music, martial arts and mindfulness practices as well as improvements in school curricula and teaching methods have been shown to improve social and educational outcomes. One last type of intervention that yielded good results is nurse home visits to low-income mothers of young children which had the effect of improving developmental outcomes of children by teaching mothers parenting skills and healthy practices.

These interventions aren’t to be confused with efforts at increasing IQ that caused little improvement beyond temporarily increasing IQ scores, which has no relevance in terms of life outcomes. IQ can probably benefit from increased language skills and executive function but it doesn’t seem to be the target of remedial intervention on those underlying abilities of which IQ test performance would only be a byproduct.

Now you might wonder how big a problem child poverty and its neurological consequences are in contemporary societies. Although the most extreme and widespread child poverty is seen in developing countries, industrialized countries like the USA, Israel, Turkey, Chile and Spain have rates of prevalence above 20%, whereas countries in Western Europe tend to maintain rates around or below 10%.

While informative, reported child poverty rates only include those who live below an arbitrarily defined poverty threshold in a given year, but the effects on poverty likely affect those living only slightly above poverty line and do not meet their developmental needs and those who have experienced poverty in the past but were living above the threshold when the figures were reported.

Within the United States, significant differences in the prevalence and the nature of child poverty exist between ethnic groups with 34% of Native Americans, 13% of Asians/Pacific Islanders, 36% of African-Americans, 31% of Hispanics and 12% of European Americans living under poverty line in 2015.

Comparing African-Americans and European Americans, the nature of poverty differed markedly with 77% of African Americans experiencing poverty at least once in their childhood and 37% living in poverty for more than 9 years.In comparison, only 30% of European American children experienced poverty while growing up, including 5% for more than 9 years. 40% of black children and 8% of white children were poor at birth. Among those born poor, 60% of African Americans and 25% of European Americans were still poor at age 17, among those not born in poverty, 20% of black children and 5% of whites were poor at age 17.

With the effects of poverty worse felt at a younger age and during long periods of time, such interracial differences in prevalence and persistence of child poverty are one plausible large contributor to the observed gaps in educational and behavioral outcomes between the two groups.

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This is a good piece. Great summation of the literature. It’s hilarious seeing the grandstanding on peepees blog. What is there to disagree with that certain environmental factors decrease brain size? It’s incredible. This “genetic determinism” that peepee pushes is retarded. I’ll leave more thoughts later with refs but those people on peepees blog are clueless and let “genetic determinism” cloud rational views on an subject.

“Although it is also possible that genetics play a role in individual susceptibility to these factors, the idea that genetic background cause people to be poor in the first place and then have their brains damaged by environmental factors is not supported by science and belongs to pseudo-Darwinian creationism, especially since such deficits appear to be reversible to a substantial degree due to brain plasticity.”
If some organisms are more likely than others to be influenced by poverty (i.e. variation in ‘vulnerability’), then the explanation isn’t dismissed if you, in the prior sentence, gave credence to the explanation, in part, by “genetics”. It seems like a smidgen of self-awareness, followed by a self-refuting point. How can it be ‘insert pejorative here’ while you simultaneously allow for the possibility to be predisposed/more likely than others? Now, to the point of ‘poverty’, that doesn’t make sense, but extending to other examples, it does. One can be at a disadvantage simply because of the way they were born: if all Asians decided to flock the market in the NBA, then they would find themselves at a natural disadvantage compared to Bosnians, for example (adjusting for the Bosnian population). If you are unintelligent, you will not succeed in life. This can be due (obviously), in part, to poverty.

“such interracial differences in prevalence and persistence of child poverty are one plausible large contributor to the observed gaps in educational and behavioral outcomes between the two groups.”
Sure, they must contribute, it doesn’t seem very likely that they would be inconsequential. But to what degree? It doesn’t logically follow that because one is poor, one is “unintelligent” and only because one is poor. This applies to any other factor. For example, another factor that can obviously play alongside (i.e. not negate any/all other factors) poverty/’x’ is consanguineous marriage (which has already been touched on in this blog). It all boils down to what you mean by ‘large’ and the relationship the ‘large’ effect has on other factors, environmental or genetic.

It seems like a smidgen of self-awareness, followed by a self-refuting point. How can it be ‘insert pejorative here’ while you simultaneously allow for the possibility to be predisposed/more likely than others?

The point is: although differences between SES groups are unlikely to be caused by genetics, variation within groups may be caused in part by genetics, with some people being genetically less vulnerable to the effects of poverty than others.

These are average differences, some people growing up poor manage to get better developed brains than others living in priviledged conditions.

One can be at a disadvantage simply because of the way they were born: if all Asians decided to flock the market in the NBA, then they would find themselves at a natural disadvantage compared to Bosnians, for example (adjusting for the Bosnian population).

A swedish study says the heritability of income during a given year is 0.41 for males and 0.27 for women. The heritability over 20 years is 0.63 for males and 0.48 for females. That’s in Sweden, don’t know about other countries.

“The point is: although differences between SES groups are unlikely to be caused by genetics, variation within groups may be caused in part by genetics, with some people being genetically less vulnerable to the effects of poverty than others.”
Except individuals who are unintelligent do not succeed in attaining high status or positions in life. If you are less intelligent, then you are not as likely to succeed in life (and maintain/invest wealth/high status). It, again, relies on a self-refuting concept. If “variation within groups may be caused in part by genetics”, then there is a degree of variation attributable to genetics in group A that causes them to excel in avoiding negative outcomes (in regards to SES); this not not observed in group B, as they are, like I hinted to above, more ‘susceptible’ to the negative factor. Avoiding the negative factor is highlighted by the differences between groups A and B in that one group is more susceptible to the negative factor and that the “variation within groups may be caused in part by genetics”.
If one group of rabbits cannot hide itself in the grass as well as another group of rabbits, and if it is known that a degree of the variation of fur (which is the most relevant factor in staying hidden) is caused by genetics, then one group of rabbits has an ‘edge’ over the other (caused, in part, by genetic differences).
“These are average differences, some people growing up poor manage to get better developed brains than others living in priviledged conditions.”
Of course, variation is just that: variation. It isn’t absolute, there will be outliers. But I would expect poor people to be at a disadvantage, and it seems that we agree that a proportion of this variation that causes this ‘susceptibility to poverty’ is, as you say, “caused in part by genetics (related to variation within groups)”.
” swedish study says the heritability of income during a given year is 0.41 for males and 0.27 for women. The heritability over 20 years is 0.63 for males and 0.48 for females. That’s in Sweden, don’t know about other countries.”
So it would be accurate the state that there are obvious differences in regards to the proportion of variation that can be attributed to genetics between males and females in Sweden. Income, over 20 years, is more heritable in males than it is in females.
“So it tells you that if genetics are responsible for SES differences, the contribution can only be low to moderate.”
Who defines what low to moderate is? Chunking it up into fifths, 0-.19 can be low, .20-.39 can be moderate-low, .40-.59 can be moderate, .60-.79 can be moderate-high, and .80-1.00 can be high. Therefore, .41 is moderate and .27 is moderate-low; .63 is moderate-high and .48 is moderate. Seems more aligned with the reasonable result we expect of most human traits: that a proportion of the variance is heritable and a proportion of the variance is caused by the environment.

Except individuals who are unintelligent do not succeed in attaining high status or positions in life.

Not necesarily, plus the brain development/poverty relationship is not linear. Smaller increases in income cause larger improvements among the most disadvantaged.

If you are less intelligent, then you are not as likely to succeed in life (and maintain/invest wealth/high status)

Except the low or moderate heritability of income makes it unlikely that differences in SES are largely driven by genetic differences, and nothing indicates that the genetic component of the variance in income is tied to the genetic component of intelligence, it might just as well be tied to the genetics of obesity or beauty as we know obese people are discriminated against whereas good looking ones are more kindly treated.

then there is a degree of variation attributable to genetics in group A that causes them to excel in avoiding negative outcomes (in regards to SES); this not not observed in group B, as they are, like I hinted to above, more ‘susceptible’ to the negative factor.

No, the reasoning is group A and B have the same degree of vulnability to factor C but group B is worse affected by factor C than group A is.

But I would expect poor people to be at a disadvantage, and it seems that we agree that a proportion of this variation that causes this ‘susceptibility to poverty’ is, as you say

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t talk about susceptibility to poverty, I talk about susceptibility to the adverse consequences of poverty which explains why individuals of low SES backgrounds will outperform better off one although on average, lower income people fare worse.

Since I know where you’re coming from, implying that the Black and White achievement gaps are at least due in part to ancestral genetics, you need to prove that the blacks of West Virginia tend to come first in life outcomes and those of South Carolina left. If no such patterns emerge, you can still argue for dysgenic trends unrelated to African Ancestry, but thats adding ad hoc over ad hoc explanations and it’s definitely not serious.

Yes, I said: Except individuals who are unintelligent do not succeed in attaining high status or positions in life. I didn’t say that “individuals who are unintelligent will never succeed in attaining high status or positions in life”. The two are different.

“plus the brain development/poverty relationship is not linear. Smaller increases in income cause larger improvements among the most disadvantaged.”
This leads me to my second point, responding to both the quote above and what you stated above (“Although this is absolute common sense, conservative ideologues have managed to convince a large part of the public that pro-poor policies would in fact be harmful to the needy whereas pro-rich ones would mysteriously benefit them.”).

This is parroting the age-old “trickle down economics” canard not based in any grounded viewpoint purported by economists/projected results. As if the never-ending glazier’s fallacy of US economy is better, by any metric.

“Smaller increases in income”.

By who? By the government? Why rely on theft to fuel a never-ending cycle of dependency on the state? If you are familiar with the welfare cliff, you will take full advantage of it, considering that the impoverished are relatively adept at realizing their situation.
I quote: The aim of socialism is to bring the lower classes into the middle class and dissolve the upper classes; what is not realized here is the existence of a centralized bureaucracy would only set up a new upper class of ‘bureaucratic elites’, privileging themselves with the primary hold in capital and resources as they monopolize distribution; this solution to ‘class warfare’ defeats itself. While some individuals are truly disadvantaged and in need of help, automatically labelling the poor as ‘in need’ is a sure way to keep them so. Not only is the welfare system flawed in acting as a ‘free lunch’ to the unwilling, but it is also a trap, waiting to backfire as soon as an individual’s standard of living raises to a point where they no longer qualify for aid, but will not maintain a good standard of living for some time until they are independent. The services provided by bureaucracy are poor and make for a tax more expensive than any bill or pricetag on the market; they are poor for the same reason a diabetic has more incentive to exercise than a perfectly fit individual: there’s always the threat of health, metaphorically job security. Also, they are more expensive due to added-on bureaucratic costs (paperwork, wages, etc.) and the cost for the actual services themselves, even more so for high-end service. By putting the tax burden on the rich and business, one is sure to hamper industry; every cent of a profit taxed is a cent lost to being able to provide more jobs, better goods and services, and a better working facility. This is to assume that the bureaucracy won’t own and manage the workplaces, in which the threat of failure and profit loss would not factor in decision-making for the company’s (worker’s) best interests.

“Except the low or moderate heritability of income makes it unlikely that differences in SES are largely driven by genetic differences”

You’re right, it makes it low-moderately so that the variation is attributable to genetics. I’m going off of your own numbers and I never said it was ‘largely driven by genetic factors’. I said: a proportion of the variance is heritable and a proportion of the variance is caused by the environment. I’ll ask that you not put words in my mouth, as my comment is right there. Quote my statement in full.

“and nothing indicates that the genetic component of the variance in income is tied to the genetic component of intelligence”

Well, given how career paths in STEM require some cognitive capacity above the standard/average, I’d say that in that respect, this is untrue. If you are simply ‘not intelligent’, then you aren’t as likely to get a career in jobs that are very demanding, like STEM careers, to name an example. Looking at some positions in government, the reverse is true. 🙂

“it might just as well be tied to the genetics of obesity or beauty as we know obese people are discriminated against whereas good looking ones are more kindly treated.”

This presupposes some massive conspiracy against obese people. It is true, people who are not obese make less than the non-obese. The same is true of taller people, too. Korean-Americans make less than Japanese-Americans, too. But jumping the gun to ‘discrimination’ dismisses necessary context. There is not an ‘obese bias’ or a ‘racial bias’ in employment. In the US, at least, there are affirmative action programs benefitting females and minority groups, if that’s the race-based discrimination you mean.

“No, the reasoning is group A and B have the same degree of vulnability to factor C but group B is worse affected by factor C than group A is.”

A self-refuting statement. Then group B is more vulnerable to the factor if the factor affects the two groups the same way. If they have the same vulnerability, then, rephrasing the point, you are stating that both groups possess, in similar degrees, “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed”. It just means the statement about vulnerability is not correct.

To the image, it follows the same faulty logic. You’re just describing the environmentability and proving the heritability estimate inaccurate (obviously, as it isn’t 100%, or 1.0, for anything). Like I said above, organisms are just genes described in an environment. If the lighting is the same and it is the same crop and ‘100%’ of the variation in height can be attributed to genetic factors, then changing the environment (in our case, from uniform soil to deficient soil) will have no impact on the variation as it is 100% attributed to the genetics. All you’re stating is that the ‘100% heritability’ at the top is incorrect, because the variation does not rely entirely on genetic variation, but environmental causes, too. Which is something I agree with, because extending the assertions to the absurd is preposterous. If all the variation in height was caused by genes, then this assumes some creationism that the organisms were all created without actually stemming off of some recent common ancestor: the trait was, in no way, shape, or form, influenced by any shifts in the environment. This simply isn’t true. If all the variation was caused by the environment, then it assumes that gradualism doesn’t exist and all variation is a sudden burst in one generation. That just flies right into the face of natural selection/mutations causing differences in organisms and the niches they inhabit.

Put another way, if I change the soil for those flowers and observe changes in the variation of height, I can conclude that, to some degree, the environment plays a role in the variation of height. It doesn’t tell me anything about the role of genetics in the variation, just that the organism’s genes are affected by the aforementioned change in the environment. It tells you about the environmentability, not the heritability.

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t talk about susceptibility to poverty, I talk about susceptibility to the adverse consequences of poverty which explains why individuals of low SES backgrounds will outperform better off one although on average, lower income people fare worse.”

I realize that you weren’t just talking about not having enough money, but all the ramifications of not having enough. It’s also important to consider the purchasing power of the currency in the region, as well as the inflation rate. It isn’t as simple as “I don’t have ‘x’ dollars”. It is “I don’t have ‘x’ dollars compared to ‘…’ in [conditions of the economy]”. Also, I’d ask that you revise your statement, you just refuted yourself. You said: which explains why individuals of low SES backgrounds will outperform better off one although on average, lower income people fare worse. Not only is this a grammatically incorrect sentence (not being nit-picky, I genuinely cannot understand what you’re trying to say, as it refutes what you said earlier), as it makes a difference if you meant “will outperform better-off ones” or “will outperform better-off one”, but it can be rephrased as: which explains why individuals of low SES backgrounds will outperform better off one[s] (as in, individuals of lower SES will OUTperform individuals of higher SES backgrounds, the reverse of what you mentioned) although on average, lower income people fare worse (which is a non-sequitur given how you claim the exact opposite above).

And I never said “largely driven by genetic differences”. I never claimed you meant null or negligible, either. If that was implied, I suggest you re-read the post. I retract any ‘implications’, if so.

Yes, I said: Except individuals who are unintelligent do not succeed in attaining high status or positions in life. I didn’t say that “individuals who are unintelligent will never succeed in attaining high status or positions in life”. The two are different.

You implied that the returns on intelligence were equal all across the SES spectrum as though society was perfectly meritocratic. The fact is that a smart poor black has fewer opportunities to succeed than a less smart rich white. He’s more likely to attend a failing school, to face job discrimination, to deal with his relative’s issues, to live in a single-parent household… And ultimately wind up with much poorer career prospects.

This is parroting the age-old “trickle down economics” canard not based in any grounded viewpoint purported by economists/projected results. As if the never-ending glazier’s fallacy of US economy is better, by any metric.

No paroting at all, this is the libertarian/small government crowd’s leitmotiv.

By who? By the government? Why rely on theft to fuel a never-ending cycle of dependency on the state? If you are familiar with the welfare cliff, you will take full advantage of it, considering that the impoverished are relatively adept at realizing their situation.

Taxes aren’t theft, they’re the price of civilization. Welfare can be dumb, like the US system, with means-tested programs that do not really improve quality of life or it can be smart. It can take the form of subsidized jobs for at risk populations, minimum wage can be made higher so that work is correctly awarded… There are lots of cost-effective ways to bring meaningful change in people’s life. It has been proven multiple times that inequality hampers economic growth.

You’re right, it makes it low-moderately so that the variation is attributable to genetics. I’m going off of your own numbers and I never said it was ‘largely driven by genetic factors’. I said: a proportion of the variance is heritable and a proportion of the variance is caused by the environment. I’ll ask that you not put words in my mouth, as my comment is right there. Quote my statement in full.

You can assume anything you want to. heritability only shows within-group variation, however, you can’t prove that genetics cause group differences without empirically demonstrating causality. It’s only with actual genetic analysis that you can tell the magnitude and the direction of group differences that are caused by genetics.

The only twin studies that could work are those that compare second generation multiracial DZ twins and explore the relationship between traits and ancestry.

Well, given how career paths in STEM require some cognitive capacity above the standard/average, I’d say that in that respect, this is untrue. If you are simply ‘not intelligent’, then you aren’t as likely to get a career in jobs that are very demanding, like STEM careers, to name an example. Looking at some positions in government, the reverse is true.

It’s not the whole story, intelligence alone does not explain school grades, motivation and self-discipline outdo IQ when it comes to school achievment and therefore, career prospects.

This presupposes some massive conspiracy against obese people. It is true, people who are not obese make less than the non-obese. The same is true of taller people, too. Korean-Americans make less than Japanese-Americans, too. But jumping the gun to ‘discrimination’ dismisses necessary context. There is not an ‘obese bias’ or a ‘racial bias’ in employment. In the US, at least, there are affirmative action programs benefitting females and minority groups, if that’s the race-based discrimination you mean.

There is huge racial discrimination in the US, affirmative action only applies in college application and the civil service. But in the unskilled private sector jobs that the poor need the most, racial discrimination is huge.

One instance of discrimination:

A self-refuting statement. Then group B is more vulnerable to the factor if the factor affects the two groups the same way. If they have the same vulnerability, then, rephrasing the point, you are stating that both groups possess, in similar degrees, “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed”. It just means the statement about vulnerability is not correct.

No, it seems like you don’t get it. Individuals in group A and B are equally genetically vulnerable to the effects of poverty, but group B is poorer, so the individuals of groub B end up with worse outcomes in spite of equal genetic fitness. That’s called norms of reaction.

Not only is this a grammatically incorrect sentence (not being nit-picky, I genuinely cannot understand what you’re trying to say, as it refutes what you said earlier), as it makes a difference if you meant “will outperform better-off ones” or “will outperform better-off one”, but it can be rephrased as: which explains why individuals of low SES backgrounds will outperform better off one[s] (as in, individuals of lower SES will OUTperform individuals of higher SES backgrounds, the reverse of what you mentioned) although on average, lower income people fare worse (which is a non-sequitur given how you claim the exact opposite above).

????? Confusion is in your head and only there. Fact: some poor people are smarter than richer ones even though rich people tend to be smarter than poor ones on average. But the SES returns on intelligence vary between social category. And we both know that black poverty has deep historical roots.

And I never said “largely driven by genetic differences”. I never claimed you meant null or negligible, either. If that was implied, I suggest you re-read the post. I retract any ‘implications’, if so.

No, your claim is that heritability prevents from dismissing genetic causes for group differences. It does not.

“Since I know where you’re coming from, implying that the Black and White achievement gaps are at least due in part to ancestral genetics, you need to prove that the blacks of West Virginia tend to come first in life outcomes and those of South Carolina left. If no such patterns emerge, you can still argue for dysgenic trends unrelated to African Ancestry, but thats adding ad hoc over ad hoc explanations and it’s definitely not serious.”

Why examine states that are multi-racial? To get a better picture, examine areas that have exclusively black populations. I’m also having a difficult time finding GDP (PPP) per capita broken down by race AND state. I found the following, though:

By race, per capita income adjusted for inflation was 20,277 for blacks/African Americans. For whites, it was 32,910. By state in 2016, West Virginia was 36,315 (from the source in the wiki, “chained 2009 dollars). For South Carolina was 37,063. This has changed currently, as South Carolina is now 42,272, whereas West Virginia is 40,071. Can’t find anything breaking it down by race within the states, though, so extrapolating from the GDP per capita (inflation adjusted), blacks earn about 12k less.

It’s also worthwhile to note that your chart, unsourced as it is, relies on self-reporting and, for some reason, doesn’t have info on lots of states that certainly have a black population. Pair it with subsequent analysis to corroborate said ancestry and you’ll have an argument.

There is also an interesting sleight of hand committed here: show me that blacks in WV come first in ‘life outcomes’, above blacks in SC, otherwise the heritability of IQ and racial creationism in terms of cognitive ability is fulfilled! Well, it’s a multi-faceted answer revolving around personal choice, too. If by life outcomes, you mean GDP (PPP) per capita, then to that I state: Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat. I’ve yet to find any evidence of GDP per capita broken down by race and state, only by race and by state, but the issue here is that, in 2010, West Virginia was 3.4% black, whereas in 2015, South Carolina was 27.6% black. Cannot extrapolate the raw GDP per capita to all citizens because the racial composition isn’t the same. I shouldn’t be presenting this information for you, though.

For example, from http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/98-07.pdf (figure 12, considering males ’92-’94), there is an observable trend which is intuitive and demonstrated. If you are not as ‘intelligent’, it is not as likely that you will succeed in fields that are very demanding (of a high intelligence). You cannot expect a lot of PhD’s if you are don’t have high intelligence. That is part of the explanation why Ashkenazi Jews have excelled in many fields: a high IQ and an education-based culture.

By the way, an ‘ad hoc’ explanation (read: fallacy) is concerned with moving the goalposts, so to speak. In the face of new information, instead of revising the hypothesis, a convenient catchall is utilized to ‘explain away’ the internal inconsistencies, even though it isn’t really justified or defendable. An example: “The Earth is flat!” “Well, satellite images show that the Earth is actually not flat, but spheroid.” “Well, it could always just be some massive photographic conspiracy…”

The relationship between African ancestry and IQ isn’t referenced as a response to fallacious explain away a refutation: it is the central premise. The heritability of IQ has already been demonstrated and the appeal to special pleading of natural selection affecting an organism, save for ‘insert special case here’ is fallacious.

Why examine states that are multi-racial? To get a better picture, examine areas that have exclusively black populations. I’m also having a difficult time finding GDP (PPP) per capita broken down by race AND state. I found the following, though:

I don’t get your logic: what I tell you is that if group differences exist and the cause is in part genetic then blacks with more European ancestry should have better life outcomes. GDP is meaningless, I’m talking of things like education, health, crime, occupation, personal income and wealth…

The states with no data are states where the black poplation is too small for statistical relevance. Also, race is always self reported.

Self-reported race is a solid metric.

We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.

The identical diagram has since been derived by others, using a similar or greater number of microsatellite markers and individuals. More recently, a survey of 3,899 SNPs in 313 genes based on US populations (Caucasians, African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics) once again provided distinct and non-overlapping clustering of the Caucasian, African-American and Asian samples: “The results confirmed the integrity of the self-described ancestry of these individuals”. Hispanics, who represent a recently admixed group between Native American, Caucasian and African, did not form a distinct subgroup, but clustered variously with the other groups. A previous cluster analysis based on a much smaller number of SNPs led to a similar conclusion: “A tree relating 144 individuals from 12 human groups of Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania, inferred from an average of 75 DNA polymorphisms/individual, is remarkable in that most individuals cluster with other members of their regional group”.

“I don’t get your logic: what I tell you is that if group differences exist and the cause is in part genetic then blacks with more European ancestry should have better life outcomes. GDP is meaningless, I’m talking of things like education, health, crime, occupation, personal income and wealth…”
To what degree, though? You’re missing my point: it isn’t as if every mixed person has the same degree of admixture, you’re really cutting corners in order to get a truly representative sample, both of white ancestors and of black ancestors.

“The states with no data are states where the black poplation is too small for statistical relevance. Also, race is always self reported.”
I am aware, but a self-report tells us nothing of the degree of admixture. The average mixed person doesn’t have knowledge of their genetic lineage, they won’t be able to tell you to what degree they are mixed, and conflating an equivalence between one mixed person and another is not intellectually honest. Essentially, the mixed people in one state are not necessarily the same as the mixed people in another state.

“Self-reported race is a solid metric.”
“I agree there. Fact of the matter is, Bindleton’s statement that the chart “relies on self-reporting” is useless because as seen above its a great predictor of geographic ancestry/race.”
I’m quite aware that you can, very easily, ascribe a racial identity to a person just as easily as they can, but when discussing the proportion of admixture, not all mixed people are created equal, so to speak. For example, a mixed person whose African ancestors came from Kongo and were mixed with the Portuguese is not equivalent to mixed person with Angolan African ancestry and British European ancestry. Self-reports don’t tell us anything about the origin or degrees of differentiation. I think you’re misunderstanding my point, I accept the validity of a self-report and that it is virtually always accurate, but when discussing degrees of admixture, the assumption that mixed people are linear and from the same stock isn’t accurate.

“Genetic analysis can tell admixture easily, hence the map showing that the degree of European ancestry among self-reported blacks varies across states.”
Genetic analysis can, which is what I’ve been asking for to examine the degrees of admixture instead of fallaciously assuming mixed people=x% group A, y% group B, etc.
The map you linked was without source and only mentioned self-reports instead of genetic analyses. How can a self-report analyze the genetics of the individual to determine the degree of admixture? All it does is accurately examine the mixed heritage, but in questions of precision, that isn’t enough. You’re still missing the point, and now you’ve conflated what you linked to initially (without source for me to even examine if they did pair the self-reports to get a general estimate of the degree of admixture, because they might have done that for all I know) to a separate issue.
Just examining an individual and concluding that they are mixed race doesn’t tell you to what degree the population you examined is mixed race. Mixed people in one location can vary in separate locations, so when you ask me about mixed people in South Carolina and West Virginia, it is fallacious to assume they are carbon copies from the same regions. White nations also vary in terms of IQ, too, as do black nations.

Study based on individual feelings. You can’t tell when you’re being discriminated against unless you can read people’s mind. When you don’t get a job, or get arrested by the police you just think “I didn’t get this job” or “I got arrested”, you don’t think about discrimination although it’s possible that things would have been different if you were of an other race.

“This is exactly what the map does.”
No, that’s what RaceRealist’s sources do, not yours. You just attached an image with no source, he followed up with a proper citation (“Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity.”).
You cannot determine the degree to which an individual has Caucasian ancestry just because they identify as black. If you have ‘x’ Caucasian and African ancestors, you are different than somebody who has ‘y’ Caucasian and African ancestors. They can still both identify has black, both still have “European admixture”, but if you are interested in the degree to which the European ancestry affects the IQ, proportions are relevant.

“I gave you the source. You don’t understand that it is a genetic analysis study of the degree of European/African/Native admixture of self-reported blacks.”
You actually didn’t source anything. The post where you attached the image has no source for the image. If it is as you describe, then, as expected, blacks across the US have different degrees of European admixture, and if you’re asking for ‘life outcomes’, then I suggest trying to find GDP (PPP) per capita broken down by race AND state, because, as I said above, I could not find anything of the sort.

“This is not the point of the study.”
You’ll have to link it first.

“Study based on individual feelings. You can’t tell when you’re being discriminated against unless you can read people’s mind. When you don’t get a job, or get arrested by the police you just think “I didn’t get this job” or “I got arrested”, you don’t think about discrimination although it’s possible that things would have been different if you were of an other race.”

“Ad Hoc Rationalization
In this fallacy, an explanatory factor, condition, or reason is set forth without validity to counter a specific objection or argument in order to defend one’s original assertion, hypothesis, findings, or conclusion.”
I sense a hint of projection with your initial accusation of ad hoc rationalization. This is a perfect example of what you accused me of: people don’t feel discriminated against, but that is only because it is the result of a deeper racist conspiracy theory.
How else would they examine the perception of discrimination, by looking at the weather? They have to ask if the individuals who are alleged victims actually perceive such injustice.
Here is your own logic extended to another framework.
From: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Ad-Hoc-fallacy.
“Freudian analyst: You are clearly suffering from an Oedipal complex.

Analysand: I don’t feel like I’m in love with my mother and hate my father.

Freudian analyst: That is because you are in denial.

Marxist: The proletariat are clearly oppressed by the bourgeoisie.

Proletariat: I don’t feel oppressed.

Marxist: That is because you suffer from false consciousness.

Here the analysand and the proletariat provide counterevidence to the claims made by the Freudian and the Marxist, who must sustain their arguments by dismissing the basis for the counterarguments. Thus they have rather craftily in the moment — ad hoc — come up with bulwarks, as it were, to preserve their theoretical claims.

In addition to being ad hoc, both these rebuttals have the convenient advantage of being unfalsifiable. There is no way to prove one is not in denial or one does not have a false consciousness. This ploy thus also seems to tacitly rely upon the Appeal to Ignorance—i.e., you cannot prove you’re not in denial/suffering from false consciousness; therefore, you are. A tangled web is thus woven.”

You are also still appealing to a conspiratorial tone of “any disparity is due to racism”. You completely discount the fact that blacks are disproportionately involved in criminal activity. Police aren’t shooting blacks because they are racist against them, this age-old canard was actually debunked: by a black man! http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.
It’s a false assumption and no such investigation into police precincts has actually proven some underground police racism against blacks or Hispanics. It’s also presuming an all-white police department.
And again, on the employment racist conspiracy, simply because a disparity exists does not mean you can arbitrarily assign nefarious motivation, it’s intellectually dishonest. Women are paid more than men, employers want to hire males more than females. This doesn’t make employers sexist.

And another thing, the assumption that every African-American who is mixed descends from the same stock of individual isn’t a reasonable position. Slaves didn’t just come from the “black part of Africa”, Africa has variation (also ironic to conveniently assume no variation within a category when it is beneficial to your worldview, but berate others when they make the same assumptions as you do), just as Europe does. It is an argument from ignorance to claim: “Prove to me that white ancestry doesn’t improve IQ in mixed African-Americans! Can’t do it, therefore it is not true.”
The whole point is to remain agnostic regarding the issue instead of resorting to absolute environmental dependence/determinism (read: sociologist’s fallacy). Again, to reiterate: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
This also relies on the fact that only direct examination is the only way to prove the claim. You do not have to directly examine a specific phenomenon in order to ascertain its existence, you can simply examine its influence. To make an astronomical analogy, it would be as if claiming black holes don’t exist just because we cannot directly observe them: we can ascertain the existence because of observing how it interacts with its environment and its effects upon said environment, which is what the whole heritability estimates do.

Ok, let’s make it short because you write a lot but don’t say much and get everything confused. You mention the “sociologist’s fallacy” which is at the core of the argument. It was invented by Jensen who criticized the fact that controlling for SES factors resulted in matching for genotype. Ironically, this agrument is even more fallacious: it’s called reification fallacy or fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity.[1][2] In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: “the map is not the territory”.

With this fallacious logic, I can replace “matching for genotype” by “matching for Santa Claus/Holy Spirit/Big Foot” just pick your favorite, they’re all equally undemonstrated abstractions.

Controlling for SES variables is a normal procedure in research, if you claim that this results in matching for genotype, then simply prove it.

For instance, the correlation between IQ and income is 0.4. So IQ may explain 16% of the variance in income or the other way around. So if I control for income and notice that it attenuates or erases the gap between two groups, I can safely assume that income, or something related to income has a causal role in IQ differences.

Is it genotype? It’s unlikely judging from the low-moderate heritability of income and the well demonstrated social and historical factors that quite evidently play a role in the black/white income gap. So until someone finds genes that make blacks less likely to become rich that whites, Occam’s razor tells me: due to a variety of demonstrated historical and social factors, blacks are less likely to earn high incomes than whites, which exposes them to more IQ-depressing factors. This statement is falsifiable, but it has to be empirically falsified, not by abstract ad hoc hypotheses. Got it?

Apart from that: as for the maps, I provided the source link, all the authors of this blog have seen it, other users have clicked it so it’s here for your eyes to see. As I told you a hundred time, it describes the average degree of African, Native and European ancestry of African-Americans in each state with a statistically meaningful African American population. Not the share of African-Americans who identify as mixed-race as you imply for no reason.

Some other points you raise will be addressed in upcoming posts. For the time being, I’ll ask you more humility in your arguments, better formatting effort and shorter comment length. You write too much a say to little.

“Ok, let’s make it short because you write a lot but don’t say much and get everything confused”
That’s not really an argument, it’s just a cop-out to not discuss the criticisms I’ve raised with your faulty reasoning.

“You mention the “sociologist’s fallacy” which is at the core of the argument. It was invented by Jensen who criticized the fact that controlling for SES factors resulted in matching for genotype. Ironically, this agrument is even more fallacious: it’s called reification fallacy or fallacy of misplaced concreteness.”
Again, a basic misunderstanding of what the fallacy is actually explaining. It isn’t related to the dismissal of controlling for SES, it’s that it is fallacious to control for SES and commit a cum hoc fallacy. Simply because being poor lowers your IQ doesn’t mean that one can only have a low IQ because one is poor., or (the most common one I’ve heard) that a lower income correlates with higher criminal activity, therefore being poor is why people are more criminal (without regard for other causes). On the poverty–>crime bit: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12552-016-9164-y. Also, your sentence is poorly strung together. “…Who criticized the fact that controlling for SES factors resulted in matching for genotype”, do you mean to say that, when controlling for environmental factors, the results matched that of controlling for ‘genotype’? Yes, genetics and the environment do contribute to the variation in many traits, from IQ to height. This is already known, you’re just repeating the conclusion of the sources I’ve cited.
It will actually only be conflating the concrete with the abstract (i.e. fallacious) provided that the other causes are actually ‘abstract’ and only ‘conceptual’, which they are not:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24489417

“With this fallacious logic, I can replace “matching for genotype” by “matching for Santa Claus/Holy Spirit/Big Foot” just pick your favorite, they’re all equally undemonstrated abstractions.”
“who criticized the fact that controlling for SES factors resulted in matching for genotype”
Right above, you argued for a similar proportion of influence in terms of variation. That might just be because the sentence wasn’t really structured properly, but the ‘low-moderate’ heritability you cited yourself flies in the face of this. Again, simply because you cannot locate a ‘gay gene(s)/gene interaction’ doesn’t mean homosexuality as a natural cause is non-existent.

“Controlling for SES variables is a normal procedure in research, if you claim that this results in matching for genotype, then simply prove it.”
Again, I’m not claiming that it is “matching” (that is, equivalent) to the impact genes have on the variation: it could vary from .4-.6, it doesn’t have to be ‘matching’ or equivalent (as in 50/50). The argument is that a proportion of the variation is explained by environmental causes and another proportion to genetic causes. You’ve already demonstrated that you are not willing to actually read what I’ve written, but if you decide to be honest in debate and actually read what I’ve stated, I never made a statement on behalf of the specific degree to which the variation can be attributable. This assumes that the heritability is static for all people, which it is not.

“For instance, the correlation between IQ and income is 0.4. So IQ may explain 16% of the variance in income or the other way around. So if I control for income and notice that it attenuates or erases the gap between two groups, I can safely assume that income, or something related to income has a causal role in IQ differences.”

I’d like to see such information where controlling for race and income diminishes all IQ differences. Examining SAT scores doesn’t actually show that lower-income families, either white or black, necessarily score lower: http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_SAT.html.
Simply because one is poor, it does not follow that one is poor only because they are not intelligent, just as one may not be less intelligent only because one is poor.
None of that diminishes the fact that intelligence is a relevant predictor, but not the only relevant predictor. Which is what I’m claiming here.

“The second aim of the meta-analysis was to
compare the predictive power of intelligence to the
predictive power of other prominent predictors of
success, parental SES and academic performance.
Such comparisons are informative because different
predictors represent different paths to a successful
career: intelligence represents one’s general ability,
parental SES represents the social advantages or
disadvantages experienced by a person, and academic
performance represents school-related learning and
motivation. Meta-analysis demonstrated that parental
SES and academic performance are indeed positively
related to career success but the predictive power of
these variables is not stronger than that of
intelligence (see Table 1). In fact, intelligence
exhibited several correlations with the measures of
success that were larger than the respective correlations
for other predictors suggesting that intelligence is, after all, a better predictor of success.”

“Is it genotype? It’s unlikely judging from the low-moderate heritability of income and the well demonstrated social and historical factors that quite evidently play a role in the black/white income gap.”
It cannot be ‘low-moderate’ while simultaneously not being attributable to genes. In fact, that ‘low-moderate’ pinpoint is exactly in-line with the viewpoint I’m talking about.
From the same source above:
“These results demonstrate that intelligence,
when it is measured before most individuals
have finished their schooling, is a powerful predictor
of career success 12 or more years later when most
individuals have already entered stable careers. Two
of the correlations – with education and occupation –
are of substantial magnitude according to the usual
standards of social science (Cohen, 1988); the
correlation with education even surpasses the well-established
correlation of .51 between intelligence and
job performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). The correlation with income is considerably lower,
perhaps even disappointingly low, being about the
average of the previous meta-analytic estimates (.15
by Bowles et al., 2001; and .27 by Ng et al., 2005).
But it should be noted that other predictors, studied in
this paper, are not doing any better in predicting
income, which demonstrates that financial success is
difficult to predict by any variable. This claim is
further corroborated by the meta-analysis of Ng et al.
(2005) where the best predictor of salary was
educational level with a correlation of only .29. It
should also be noted that the correlation of .23 is
about the size of the average meta-analytic result in
psychology (Hemphill, 2003) and cannot, therefore,
be treated as insignificant.”
I’m also not quite sure what ‘social/historical’ factors you describe and how they can be assessed. If it’s anything like the ‘racist conspiracy theory’, then it’s unfalsifiable (save for ad hoc rationalizations like “you’re so oppressed you don’t even know it!”). What about Ashkenazi Jews, who have suffered pogroms and discrimination far more severe than anything Africans have experienced. Jews are, by any metric, much more ‘oppressed’ than blacks are, and if ‘racism’ exists on a wide-scale in our modern society, anti-Semitism does, as well. Yet Jews have no issue with succeeding (excelling) in our societies. Again, that is because it isn’t as simple as discrimination, ergo unintelligence. The role of Jewish familial structure and educational attainment is certainly not inconsequential, as well as a cohesive tribal identity that has preserved itself for thousands of years. Meanwhile, single motherhood is devastating the black familial structure. Perhaps accepting agency in your own actions, as opposed to resorting to a racist conspiracy, would be a better place to start. Some unsubstantiated superstructure of racism isn’t keeping black men from staying with the women they impregnate.

“So until someone finds genes that make blacks less likely to become rich that whites, Occam’s razor tells me: due to a variety of demonstrated historical and social factors, blacks are less likely to earn high incomes than whites, which exposes them to more IQ-depressing factors.”
So until someone finds genes that make homosexuals less likely to become heterosexual, Occam’s razor tells me: due to a variety of “insert unfalsifiable references to conspiracy theories”, homosexuals are less likely be heterosexual, which exposes them to more homosexual-inducing factors.
Again, classic misunderstanding of Occam’s razor. The razor is to be used for theories that are “equally well-supported by evidence”. You’re arguing for human biological diversity if slavery or Jim Crow has had some magnified effect on subsequent generations (i.e. genetic diversity caused by negative historical circumstances not impacting other groups… like Ashkenazi Jews or Russian serfs…). Like you said, you can just as easily attribute it to “Santa Claus/Holy Spirit/Big Foot” if the aforementioned circumstances are to have relevancy today. There are no “demonstrated factors”, you just linked to a disparity among callbacks for “white/black-sounding names” and applied a nefarious moral judgement made by the employers, that the minorities are being discriminated against (even though affirmative action programs, as I cited in posts above, prove the opposite to be true). I linked to an article, which you did not respond to. Then I linked to another retweeted post showing how people don’t actually feel they are discriminated against, which led you to make an ad hoc rationalization.

“This statement is falsifiable, but it has to be empirically falsified”
You’ll have to empirically prove it first.

“by abstract ad hoc hypotheses.”
Again, an ad hoc rationalization is a fallacious and weak counter-“proposal” (emphasis on proposal) in response to a counter-argument proposed in the face of a hypothesis. So if person A says the Earth is flat, person B showing them evidence that it is not flat is the counter-argument. The counter-proposal and ad hoc rationalization would be to suggest that the images could be a part of some huge conspiracy. The ad hoc rationalization isn’t invoked in my example: it is the central premise, not a counter-proposal offering no evidence.

“I provided the source link”
No, you didn’t. For me, it is, quite literally, only showing up as an image with four maps of the US, shaded in different colours (purple, yellow, red, and green in clockwise direction). In the text below the image, there are no sources.

“For instance, the correlation between IQ and income is 0.4. So IQ may explain 16% of the variance in income or the other way around”
And just to add on the denialism and misrepresentation of the sociologist’s fallacy.https://z139.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/the-sociologists-fallacy/
“Firstly, knowing that we are working with a deviational model is informative. For one, it means that a genetic explanation is tenable; for another, it means that an environmental explanation needs to account for why no or few Blacks have realized their hypothetical genetic potential relative to Whites. Our environmental hypothesis pictures Whites as balloons that have risen near to the ceiling and Blacks as balloons that are tethered to the floor. While having the same mean amount of helium and potential to rise, Blacks, it is argued, float nearer to the ground because they are held down. But by what factors? Elsewhere, we saw that the explanation is not motivation, peer effects, market discrimination, or racist attitudes. And we saw that Blacks underperform despite extensive institutional discrimination for them. Inevitably it will be argued that the IQ gap is caused by the various outcome gaps such as the income gaps. But such explanations seem queer because it’s now usually conceded that Black IQ is antecedent to Black outcomes. This is why matched for IQ Blacks frequently have a better outcome profile than Whites. For example, matched for IQ, Blacks are more educated than Whites: https://z139.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/education-by-iq-by-race.jpg
Quote: “The bachelor’s degree gap between White and Black adults was overwhelmingly due to a higher share of Black adults scoring in the lower deciles of the test score distribution. Black adults in the top two deciles were nearly 30 times as likely to obtain a Bachelor’s degree as their peers in the bottom decile….

Reducing the large academic achievement test gap between Black and White males is critical to all future efforts to close the Black-White college degree attainment gap.”

Source: The educational attainment of the nation’s young black men and their recent labor market experiences: what can be done to improve their future labor market and educational prospects

IQ is driving the education and SES gap, not education and SES the IQ gap.”

Wrong, because the effects of deprivation, chronic stress, abuse and neglect are well documented in animal research. So the overwhelming empirical evidence shows that the causal direction is that adversity lowers intellectual functioning. Jensen’s “sociologist’s fallacy” rests on reification fallacy and is actually not accepted in mainstream science.

On IQ/SES:

The predictive power of IQ is overblown by hereditarians, IQ is not the best predictor of educational or job success by any means.

On discrimination:

Racism is nothing like a “conspiracy”, it is a well documented social attitude that does affect people’s lives.

1/5 to 1/3 admits some degree of anti-Black bias

Perceptions of race-based unfair treatment are widespread among blacks.

When matched for education, blacks still earn less than whites and are more likely to be unemployed.

On Jews and blacks:

Nice fallacy of false analogy. Jews and blacks are absolutely not comparabe, blacks were slaves, then landless peasants, and were denied social mobility opportunities by law until the civil rights act of 1964. And this was true in the South and in the North, though more subtly in the North. For your information, 1964 is just 53 years ago. All black adults have parents or grand parents who were alive during this period, and it represents a lot in terms of lost inherited financial and educational capital, especially since post-civil rights era coincides with a time when it became more difficult for unskilled people to find jobs. How many American Jews know a pogrom victim? Jews were never economically or educationally oppressed, on the contrary, they were a literate urban population active in high income trades that were forbidden to christians, banking for instance was a jewish monopoly since christians were forbidden to lend money for interest. In America, blacks were slaves whereas a substantial number of Jews were slave-owners or slave traders. No need to say more.

Yes you definitely write too much to say too little, you’re extremely presumptuous and dogmatic, and your formatting is disastrous. And no, I’m not an immigrant. I’m a French citizen who lives in France.

“For the time being, I’ll ask you more humility in your arguments, better formatting effort and shorter comment length. You write too much a say to little.”
On what basis do you determine my flamboyant behavior? I’ve done no such thing to brag about, you are just making things up.
I have been formatting my posts by quoting your statements in full context, followed by my response, followed by a double space. Just find the quotation mark which marks the end of my quote, it really isn’t that difficult. If you want to dismiss an argument based on its formatting, I could have used the same arbitrary framework to dismiss your posts because you cannot actually express your thoughts in English (after all, you are an immigrant). In the same post that you dismiss my posts for their formatting, you literally state “You write too much a say to little”. Not only is this a non-argument/one-liner quip, it is not grammatically correct. You meant to state “you write too much AND say TOO little”. “And” is the coordinating conjunction you should use, because I think you might have meant to type “as”, but your finger slipped (that would be a correlative conjunction).
“To” is a preposition whereas “too” is an adverb. It might also be a typo, seeing as how you used it correctly the first time, but not the second. Again, if you want to be nitpicky and dismiss points based on formatting, you are just as guilty (kind of like how you don’t want to accuse others of fallacies, yet you’re more than willing to use them when it’s convenient).
As for the shorter comment length, I see no need to confine myself to your own subjective interpretation of what is long and short. You can either choose to read my posts/links, or not. It’s not up to me, it’s up to you. I’m not going to self-censor.
You have yet to respond to the point regarding the duality of welfare as a contradictory institution, by the way. Which seems odd seeing as how you are more than willing to berate conservative ideologues, but aren’t willing to debate them. Do you want to defend your ‘taxation is the price of civilization’ statement at all, because you just buried it once I responded. I’d like to hear how you justify an involuntary institution as being beneficial. Public spending isn’t the only way to fund programs: just because you want to lower welfare spending doesn’t mean you hate poor people, as it is shown that the state isn’t as effective with the dollars they “voluntarily receive” as charities are. For more, see: http://www.economicsjunkie.com/is-government-needed-to-fight-poverty/, https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa761_2.pdf.
On pure speculation, I’d posit that the bureaucrats don’t exactly have an incentive to stretch the dollars they receive because they have no reason to economize or seek the highest value (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsRk9RThGt0). Charities, on the other hand, are assessed on the basis of how effective they actually are because you can choose which charity you wish to donate to, unlike the state. Individuals will seek out those charities which actually fulfil the stated goals, as that’s the entire reason why they’re donating.

“Wrong, because the effects of deprivation, chronic stress, abuse and neglect are well documented in animal research. So the overwhelming empirical evidence shows that the causal direction is that adversity lowers intellectual functioning. Jensen’s “sociologist’s fallacy” rests on reification fallacy and is actually not accepted in mainstream science.”

Again, I repeat the point, as you didn’t address it:https://z139.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/the-sociologists-fallacy/
“Firstly, knowing that we are working with a deviational model is informative. For one, it means that a genetic explanation is tenable; for another, it means that an environmental explanation needs to account for why no or few Blacks have realized their hypothetical genetic potential relative to Whites. Our environmental hypothesis pictures Whites as balloons that have risen near to the ceiling and Blacks as balloons that are tethered to the floor. While having the same mean amount of helium and potential to rise, Blacks, it is argued, float nearer to the ground because they are held down. But by what factors? Elsewhere, we saw that the explanation is not motivation, peer effects, market discrimination, or racist attitudes. And we saw that Blacks underperform despite extensive institutional discrimination for them. Inevitably it will be argued that the IQ gap is caused by the various outcome gaps such as the income gaps. But such explanations seem queer because it’s now usually conceded that Black IQ is antecedent to Black outcomes. This is why matched for IQ Blacks frequently have a better outcome profile than Whites. For example, matched for IQ, Blacks are more educated than Whites: https://z139.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/education-by-iq-by-race.jpg
Quote: “The bachelor’s degree gap between White and Black adults was overwhelmingly due to a higher share of Black adults scoring in the lower deciles of the test score distribution. Black adults in the top two deciles were nearly 30 times as likely to obtain a Bachelor’s degree as their peers in the bottom decile….

Reducing the large academic achievement test gap between Black and White males is critical to all future efforts to close the Black-White college degree attainment gap.”

Source: The educational attainment of the nation’s young black men and their recent labor market experiences: what can be done to improve their future labor market and educational prospects

IQ is driving the education and SES gap, not education and SES the IQ gap.”

It goes on:
“Of course, it will be argued by some that the IQ gap is due to differences in rearing environments. Accordingly, the adult IQ gap of generation #1 is antecedent to the social outcome gap of generation #1; this social outcome gap is antecedent to the childhood rearing environment gap of generation #2; and this childhood rearing environment gap is antecedent to the adult IQ gap of generation #2.

Ok, the first problem with this model is that the math doesn’t add up. The shared environmentality of IQ in childhood is about 0.4. In adulthood it’s about 0.15. If the Black-White adult IQ gap of generation #1 was 1.1 SD and if the correlation between adult IQ and cognitively relevant childhood rearing environment was the empirically found average of about 0.8, then, assuming that all of the association between parental IQ and childhood environment represented an environmental effect (i.e., no covGE, conditioned on the child’s genotype), the rearing environment gap could be no more than 1.1 SD x 0.8. And the gap in childhood and adulthood would be, respectively 0.8 x 1.1 x SQRT (0.4) and 0.8 x 1.1 x SQRT(0.15). Or 0.6 and 0.3 SD. Parental IQ differences of generation #1 can’t possibly account for more than one third of the adult differences of generation #2.

More relevant ….this still doesn’t explain why a noticeable number of Blacks have not realized their genetic potential to the same extent as Whites. A noticeable number of Blacks are capable of realizing there genetic potential relative to other Blacks. Hence the heritability of IQ, by adolescence, is three times the shared environmentality within the Black population (60% to 20%). Blacks sibling balloons with more helium rise above those with less, despite sharing the same family environment. So why are not some Blacks capable of realizing their genetic potential relative to Whites? One can’t explain this curiosity simply by pointing to mean shared family differences between populations, since these mean differences with populations don’t create the same uniform effect within racial populations. One needs a casual mechanism to account for the uniformity in addition to one or a set of them to account for the mean difference. That is, that the difference is deviational and not distributional is non-trivially interesting. It needs some explaining.
.
Second, knowing that the effect of controlling for outcomes is a genetic and not an environmental effect means that we must face the constraints placed on environmental explanations by the low shared environmentality of IQ. This constraint has been lucidly articulated by Jensen 1973; 1998. To causally environmentally account for a one standard deviation difference, given a shred environmentality of no more than 15%, one needs to posit 2.5 standardized units of environmental effect (1/ (square root 0.15)). This is the same as saying that one needs to maintain that Blacks live in a cognitive affecting environment characteristic of that experienced by the most deprived 1% of Whites.

(This is actually an underestimate of the “environmental differences” needed, since the external factors typically labeled “environment”, are extensively genetically conditioned. The magnitude of the “environmental differences” needed would be:

= d /(SQRT c^2 of IQ)/ (SQRT c^2 of “environment”)

Now, previous attempts to escape this logic have failed; for example, James Flynn has made a reduction ad absurdum by comparing the Black-White difference to the secular difference; but the secular differences has largely turned out to be a function of psychometric bias (Must, & van Vianen, 2009; Wicherts et al., 2004; Beaujean, & Osterlind, 2008, etc.) and the residual magnitude of the difference that actually represents true latent ability differences is utterly compatible with the massive amount environmental differences between generations. The generational differences stand in stark contrast to the Black-White differences both in IQ and in environment. Indeed, a generous appraisal might put the latent ability Flynn effect (as opposed to the manifest score Flynn effect) at 0.1 SD per decade. In Flynn effect metrics, then, the Black-White latent ability difference is equivalent to a century of environmental differences. One century!! Few would honestly maintain that the actual Black-White environmental difference is that tremendous. Now, most sociologists have simply ignored this point, feeling it sufficient to point to the results of correlational studies. Since the IQ difference could be statistically explained, it has been argued, the magnitude of the cognitively conditioning outcome differences must be at least 2.5+ SD. But, as we have seen, this does not follow because the effect of controlling is primarily a genetic, not environmental one.

To summarize: when matching Blacks and Whites for environmental factors, we are matching them for genes. We know this because the within population heritabilities are about the same and because the phenomena of differential regression is no less at the far left end of the bell curve than at the far right end. This means that Black individuals are uniformly depressed – no Black balloons are reaching the ceiling — which, we said, is curious given the dearth of environmental accounts for this curiosity. This also means that showing that the difference can be statistically explained does not shown that the environmental difference between Blacks and Whites is sufficiently large enough to causally explain the differential. It is estimates that in the metrics of the Flynn effect, the B/W difference amounts to an incredible environmental difference of one century.”

So why are not some Blacks capable of realizing their genetic potential relative to Whites? One can’t explain this curiosity simply by pointing to mean shared family differences between populations, since these mean differences with populations don’t create the same uniform effect within racial populations. One needs a casual mechanism to account for the uniformity in addition to one or a set of them to account for the mean difference.

This rests on a false permise which pretends that there is no factor that affects blacks uniformly enough to cause such disparities. In fact, blacks and whites virtually live in two different coutries. First when it comes to the risks of experiencing poverty, blacks and whites are like night and day. While 70% of whites have never experienced poverty while growing up, 77% of blacks did.

Montgomery County, Maryland, operates one of the most acclaimed large public school systems in the United States. Although an increasing share of the population of this suburban school district just outside Washington, District of Columbia, is low income, and the majority of its students belongs to racial minority groups, the county graduates 9 in 10 of its students. Montgomery County’s reputation as both an affluent area with good schools and a district that serves low-income students relatively well is firmly established. Much less known is the fact that it operates the nation’s oldest and largest inclusionary zoning program–a policy that requires real estate developers to set aside a portion of the homes they build to be rented or sold at below-market prices. Building on the strength of the random assignment of children to schools, the author examines the longitudinal school performance from 2001 to 2007 of approximately 850 students in public housing who attended elementary schools and lived in neighborhoods that fell along a spectrum of very-low-poverty to moderate-poverty rates. In brief, the author finds that over a period of five to seven years, children in public housing who attended the school district’s most-advantaged schools (as measured by either subsidized lunch status or the district’s own criteria) far outperformed in math and reading those children in public housing who attended the district’s least-advantaged elementary schools. In this report, the author describes the study, the findings, and their ramifications.

This study examines how the neighborhood environments experienced over multiple generations of a family influence children’s cognitive ability. Building on recent research showing strong continuity in neighborhood environments across generations of family members, we argue for a revised perspective on “neighborhood effects” that considers the ways in which the neighborhood environment in one generation may have a lingering impact on the next generation. To specify such multigenerational effects is not simply a theoretical problem, but poses considerable methodological challenges. Instead of traditional regression techniques that may obscure multigenerational effects of neighborhood disadvantage, we utilize newly developed methods designed to generate unbiased treatment effects when treatments and confounders vary over time. The results confirm a powerful link between neighborhoods and cognitive ability that extends across generations. Being raised in a high-poverty neighborhood in one generation has a substantial negative effect on child cognitive ability in the next generation. A family’s exposure to neighborhood poverty across two consecutive generations reduces child cognitive ability by more than half a standard deviation. A formal sensitivity analysis suggests that results are robust to unobserved selection bias.*

Although it is clear that racial segregation is linked to academic achievement gaps, the mechanisms underlying
this link have been debated since James Coleman published his eponymous 1966 report. In this paper, I
examine sixteen distinct measures of segregation to determine which is most strongly associated with academic
achievement gaps. I find clear evidence that one aspect of segregation in particular—the disparity in
average school poverty rates between white and black students’ schools—is consistently the single most
powerful correlate of achievement gaps, a pattern that holds in both bivariate and multivariate analyses.
This implies that high-poverty schools are, on average, much less effective than lower-poverty schools and
suggests that strategies that reduce the differential exposure of black, Hispanic, and white students to poor
schoolmates may lead to meaningful reductions in academic achievement gaps.

There is abundant evidence that blacks and whites differ in environmental characteristics that aren’t even related to their individual characteristics. Now you can invent genes for segregation, genes for attending a poor school in spite of coming from a rich household, genes of being poor but scoring better because you attend a wealthy school… And so on, but it is meaningless and disconected from anything real.

It is estimates that in the metrics of the Flynn effect, the B/W difference amounts to an incredible environmental difference of one century.

Not true, the Flynn effect added 3 IQ points per decade, the BW/IQ gap is somewhere between 15 and 8 points, which means 26 to 50 years of Flynn effect, which is entirely plausible.

The attached image is pointing to the cum hoc fallacy, in that it is “premature” to arrive at a conclusion in that manner without actually demonstrating the existence of said gaps, showing that they act in the manner they are known to do so. For example, I’ve already shown that the iron deficiency in black/white toddlers has been significantly reduced right around the turn of the century. It is certainly plausible that children born with such deficiencies would have significant defects. The issue is that it doesn’t exist in reality anymore and that all these factors are supposedly only affecting cognitive ability, and not also depressing the weight of the infant, for example. Like I mentioned above, there are internal inconsistencies with many of the claims. From one of the links above:
“The exposure to the influences decreases with SES and yet the differences are larger, or at least not smaller, at higher SES levels (Jensen, 1998). (For an important class of environmental-biological influences (e.g., Lead pain exposure, malnutrition, etc.), the rate of exposure is conditioned on SES. These types of influences, then, are poor candidates for explaining the gap at the higher SES levels; and obviously, if, in aggregate, they explained a substantial portion of the gap, then in proportion, the gap should be smaller at higher SES levels, which it is not.)”
The issue is that it relies fundamentally on racial creationism; in that, it is assumed that the people examined are racial balloons of equal calibre, inflated with the same amount of helium, like the analogy above mentioned. Therefore, any assumption on said false premise, given the demonstrated heritability of IQ, is not logical.

“Racism is nothing like a “conspiracy”, it is a well documented social attitude that does affect people’s lives.”
It is comical to observe the same criticism (read: ad hoc rationalization) you levy against a debunking of the racist conspiracy theory can just as easily be extended to your own assessments of the canard.
If you allow yourself to fallaciously hand-wave away information because it’s based on “individual feelings”, then the “individual feelings” of potential Trump/Clinton voters can be dismissed on the same grounds. After all, it’s just their feelings. If you want to deny the capability of blacks who hold the opinion that they are not discriminated against on the grounds that their feelings can be dismissed, then you must also deny the capability of Clinton/Trump supporters who hold that blacks are more criminal/lazy/rude/violent and less intelligent.
On the latter point, it’s actually demonstrably true that blacks are more ‘violent/criminal’ than other groups. A minority committing a disproportionate majority of criminal activity would qualify the minority as being more criminal and violent. Only because I was recently discussing the state of Missouri, here is the data regarding crime in Missouri: http://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/CIM/CrimeInMissouri.html#
I don’t know how you can quantify how ‘rude’ a person is, seems like a weird question. It seems rooted in… anecdotal information. Hence the conspiratorial undertone and the unfalsifiable nature: there is no way you can debunk an anecdote, which is why the whole appeal to “I feel discriminated against” is nonsense. If the individual feelings of respondents claiming they aren’t discriminated against is simply feelings/anecdotes, then the reverse is dismissed on the same grounds. I’ve already linked to an ’empirical analysis’ of alleged police bias in fatal shootings: it doesn’t exist.

On the perception of suspicion: without actually asking the people who felt suspicious, it can just as easily be attributed to a victim complex gone awry.
On people thinking you weren’t smart: see above.
On unfair hiring/pay/promotion: without actually asking the employer why they didn’t promote the black employee, you have no justified excuse to assign the cause to some nefarious moral judgement.
On stopped by the police: without actually asking the officers why they pulled over the black suspect, you have no justified excuse to assign the cause to some nefarious moral judgement.

On white men making the most: This completely bypasses the specific of said education. Were they all graduates of Yale? Did they have the same internships or prior work experience and, if so, with what group? All these factors may be relevant/irrelevant depending on the employee. Various schools rank better and some internships speak louder when they appear on a resume. Why the assumption that it must necessarily be equal?

“Nice fallacy of false analogy. Jews and blacks are absolutely not comparabe, blacks were slaves, then landless peasants, and were denied social mobility opportunities by law until the civil rights act of 1964.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism
Every excuse blacks have for underperformance, Jews have one ten-times as worse. The history of the slave trade is peanuts compared to the horrors of the Holocaust (which is within recent memory, unlike the slave trade). Jews were not only subject to slave labour, but they were systematically exterminated. Not to mention the anti-Semitic issues trace back to the death of Christ. Jews have been victims of longer than blacks, and they have faced more hardships. Feudal serfs in Russian lands were also treated as essentially slaves, for many centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Russia.

52.2 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Black or African American bias.
18.7 percent were victims of anti-White bias.”
Doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy against whites.

“Of the 1,402 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:

52.1 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.
21.9 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.”
Doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy against Jews or Muslims. None of this means there is some implicit superstructure of racist beliefs that permeate into society.

“All black adults have parents or grand parents who were alive during this period, and it represents a lot in terms of lost financial and educational capital, especially since post-civil rights era coincides with a time when it became more difficult for unskilled people to find jobs.”
So do Jews in terms of the Holocaust. You want to talk about lost labour, what about all the Jewish assets that were seized during WW2. It is incomparable, to the tune of billions.

“How many American Jews know a pogrom victim?”
Further reinforcing the anecdote-driven mentality.

“Jews were never economically or educationally oppressed”
In Poland, sure. Jews flourished in the Pale of Settlement. After the partitioning of Poland… well, the Russians had a different story about equal rights.

“There is good evidence the the black/white IQ gap is narrowing too.”
Yes, because IQ does also rely on the environment: a proportion is traced back to its environmentability. It is only logical, but this tells you nothing about its heritability.

“On the maps:”
This is the first time I’m seeing the link appear on my end. I only see the image with no subsequent link sourcing the image. Like I said, now it makes sense, but my point still stands: not all mixed ancestry is equal. A mixed person with ancestors from Ireland and Kongo is not equivalent to a mixed person with ancestors from Portugal and Angola.

“Yes you definitely write too much to say too little, you’re extremely presumptuous and dogmatic, and your formatting is disastrous”
Seems like you’ve gotten your grammar fixed up.
Another hypocrisy I’ve noticed: I admit to my bias openly, but you should allow he who is without sin to cast the first stone. Dogmatic, while also berating conservative ideologues? Pot calling the kettle black…

“I’m a French citizen who lives in France.”
That’s not what I said. I said you were an immigrant. You have immigrated to France, at some point (through your grandparents or parents). You are not ‘French’, simply a Frenchman legally. There is a pretty big difference between an actual French person with, say, Celtic ancestry. You are about as French as Brits conquering Canada were indigenous Americans: simply because you settle in an area does not make you of the same stock of the native inhabitants. The Swede who can trace his ancestry back to the very first monarchies is not equivalent to an Afghani immigrant, just as a Swede culturally assimilating/adopting the Islamic faith/speaking Farsi doesn’t make him an Afghani native, it makes him an Afghani immigrant. His children will be immigrants, too. French people aren’t French because they were just born there and have a birth certificate, or because they can speak French.
Culturally, sure you are French. But the France of 400 years ago doesn’t include African immigrants or their children: it includes legitimate French natives, ethnic French people. Your ethnicity is from Africa, most likely, not France. You meant to say that your nationality (birthplace) is in France. The two are not equivalent.

On the perception of suspicion: without actually asking the people who felt suspicious, it can just as easily be attributed to a victim complex gone awry.
On people thinking you weren’t smart: see above.
On unfair hiring/pay/promotion: without actually asking the employer why they didn’t promote the black employee, you have no justified excuse to assign the cause to some nefarious moral judgement.

Haha! Because you believe that if asked why they treated someone unfairly, respondents will reply “because you’re black”. Please… What the data says is that a black college graduate has the same unemployment risk as a white who only completed high school, that a black without a criminal record has the same callback rate as a white with a criminal record. You can try to rationalize it as much as you want to make things appear in line with your illusions of a colorblind society, the plain data highlights that the returns of education and law abidingness in the job market are lower for blacks, it’s a fact.

I told you I have no time. And at the same time, you comment here like you haven’t clicked any of the studies I linked to in my post. So I’ll just copy and paste:

Disentangling cause and effect

The association between SES and human
brain functioning could indicate that the
experiences that are typical of different levels
of SES affect brain development (‘social causation’).
Alternatively, it could indicate that
differences in brain functioning predispose
people to a particular level of socioeconomic
success and, therefore, to a particular SES
(‘social selection’). The two possibilities
are not mutually exclusive and may operate
at different times across development
such that, for example, social causation may
explain SES-related effects on neurocognitive
development in childhood and adolescence,
which over time may inhibit socioeconomic
achievement and thus, SES in adulthood. In
addition, it is possible that genomic variation
in concert with environmental context may
influence both family SES and child development,
and that genetic variation may interact
with SES to influence neurodevelopmental
outcomes. Nevertheless, the current evidence
indicates that SES-related differences in
neural development, at least in part, reflect
social causes.

In the realm of mental health, evidence
for the social causation hypothesis of SESrelated
differences in the prevalence of
depression and anxiety is strong (although
social selection may also operate in
schizophrenia, as the SES of people
with schizophrenia is likely to decline as
a consequence of their illness and illness related
impairments)18,20,60,61. Moreover, a
natural ‘experiment’ in which one subset
of a population received a sudden income
supplement revealed that even small changes
in income for impoverished families leads to
decreased rates of childhood mental health
problems, particularly for clinically significant
externalizing behaviours62. This not
only supports the ‘social causation’ hypothesis
but also indicates that the excess mental
health burden of low-SES families may be at
least partly reversible by changes in income.
In addition, findings from a study of twins
indicate that the heritability of internalizing
problems can be modified by SES. Here, the
environment accounted for a greater percentage
of the variation in internalization at
low-SES levels63.

In the realm of cognitive functioning
there is considerable evidence that environmental
contexts exert causal influence64.
Cross-fostering studies that compared children
who were adopted within or between
SES levels also found a strong environmental
component to SES-related differences in
IQ, again supporting the social causation
hypothesis65. This approach may in fact have
underestimated environmental effects, as the
implicit assumption is that prenatal
environmental factors are genetic rather
than environmental. In addition, the impact
of poverty is greater if poverty is experienced
in early rather than late childhood3,12 and
this is difficult to explain in terms of heritability
alone. Studies comparing mono- and
di-zygotic twins also indicate that the magnitude
of genetic effects on IQ depends on
SES, such that cognitive ability is almost
entirely predicted by environmental factors
at lower-SES levels66. Thus, in addition to the
known effects of genomic variation on executive
function67, it is likely that the development
of executive function is influenced by
the environment, especially at lower SES
levels. It is also worth noting that estimates
of environmental effects in studies of twins
depend on the variance in environment
across the sample, so if there is insufficient
variation in SES then overall environmental
effects are likely to be underestimated.
Moreover, the effects of SES and of genotype
interact to produce phenotypes such as
serotonin responsivity to fenfluramine and
attention ability68,69. Lastly, some aspects
of neural development that are influenced
by SES, such as executive function, are also
responsive to intervention. This is consistent
with the ‘social causation’ hypothesis and
demonstrates that differences may be at least
partly reversible59,70,71.

No single environmental factor is likely
to explain all SES effects, and it is probable
that specific factors mediate specific aspects
of neurodevelopment. Two environmental
factors that could mediate SES-related differences
in neurocognitive development are
healthcare access and education, both of
which are better for children in higher levels
of SES. Yet, they cannot entirely explain SES
effects. For example, gradients of SES effects
on health persist in countries with universal
health care1
, and SES effects on cognition
and neurodevelopment emerge early in
childhood, before children have extensive,
formal education13,14,19,26,31,33,35–39,47.
Candidate mechanisms of SES effects
SES influences the quality of the physical
and psychosocial environment throughout
development5.

Factors in the environment,
such as exposure to cognitive stimulation in
the home, toxins, nutrition, prenatal drug
exposure and stress — including parental
stress and its associated effects on parenting
practices and parent–child interactions
— might mediate the effects of SES on the
brain (BOX 2). Consequently, the challenge is
to identify the underlying mechanisms by
which SES influences brain development.
Hypotheses concerning these mechanisms
can be formed and tested by integrating
data from studies in humans and from animal
models, each of which have different
and complementary strengths and weaknesses
(BOX 3). We focus on the three
potential mechanisms underlying the
effects of SES on neurocognitive development
that have the broadest empirical
support: prenatal factors, parental care and
cognitive stimulation.

Prenatal influences. Low SES in pregnant
women increases the likelihood of premature
birth and impaired fetal growth72, both
of which are predictive of increased rates of
childhood mental illness and poor school
performance73–77. Low SES is also associated
with higher levels of stress, higher infection
rates and poor nutrition during pregnancy.
All of these increase plasma levels of
corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) and
glucocorticoids in both the mother and
the fetus75,78–80 and can thereby restrain
fetal growth75,78 and trigger prematurity79.
Glucocorticoid administration during
pregnancy is associated with increased
externalizing behaviour, shyness, distractibility
and inattention, as well as lower IQ
in children81. Moreover, even modestly low
birthweight is linked to smaller hippocampal
volume in adults82. These findings suggest
that conditions that are associated with low
SES compromise fetal growth and neurodevelopment,
with subsequent effects on
neural function that persist into adulthood.

In rodents, pre- or peri-natal glucocorticoid
administration to pregnant females
reduces brain weight at birth, inhibits
neurogenesis and delays neuronal maturation,
myelination, gliogenesis and synapse
formation78. Moreover, maternal stress
during pregnancy decreases spine density
in multiple brain areas that are related to
emotion regulation, including the hippocampus,
anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal
cortex83, and increases behavioural and
hormonal responses to stress in the offspring
in adulthood75,78,84–86. The effects on stress
responsiveness in adulthood are abolished
by normalization of glucocorticoid levels
during pregnancy87. In Rhesus monkeys,
fetal exposure to elevated glucocorticoid
levels reduces hippocampal volume in
adulthood88. The offspring of female
Rhesus monkeys that were stressed during
pregnancy exhibit decreased birthweight,
impaired neuromotor development, attention
deficits and emotional dysregulation
across the lifespan89. Moreover, there is evidence
in rodents that prenatal influences on
hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis
activity can be transmitted across generations
in an epigenetic manner90 (see below).
Together, these findings suggest that in
pregnant women, stressors that are associated
with low SES predict birth outcomes
that mimic the effects of increased fetal glucocorticoid
exposure on neurodevelopment
and that may persist across generations.
Consequently, it is likely that SES effects
might emerge during fetal development.

Parental care. Prenatal factors are unlikely
to explain all of the effects of SES on neurodevelopment,
particularly as SES effects are
often still apparent even after controlling
for birthweight91. Postnatal parental stress
influences child development by decreasing
parental involvement and care, as described
by the family stress model4
. In humans, low
SES is associated with greater irritability and
depressed and anxious moods in parents,
which compromise parent–child
interactions92,93. Parental stress leads to harsh
and inconsistent discipline, less sensitivity to
the needs of the child, reduced verbal
communication and, in the children,
insecure attachment to the primary caregiver6,31,92–95.
Familial conflict and problematic
parental behaviour — including (but not
limited to) harsh and inconsistent discipline,
neglect and abuse — are associated across all
levels of SES with emotional and behavioural
problems in children. These problems are
not only observed when measured concurrently,
such that parenting quality correlates
with emotional and behavioural patterns in
the child, but also when measured prospectively,
as the quality of earlier parenting predicts
children’s emotional and behavioural
patterns years later93,94,96–98.
Parental care, and in particular parental
discipline, parent–child verbal communication
and sensitivity to the emotional needs
of the child, at least partially mediates the
effects of SES on emotional and cognitive
function in children6,19,91,99. High-quality
parent–child interactions are associated with
resilience among children who live in stressful,
impoverished environments100. Moreover,
clinical programmes that aim to improve
parenting practices in poor, high-risk
families improve behavioural and cognitive
outcomes in children101–103, providing experimental
evidence that is consistent with the
role of parenting as a mediator for the effects
of SES. The quality of parental care in early
childhood predicts, in a longitudinal study of
a low-SES sample, better declarative memory
and smaller hippocampal volume in low-SES
adolescents, and these associations are independent
of cognitive stimulation (see below)
and maternal intelligence104,105.
Studies in rodents and non-human
primates have revealed evidence for direct
effects of stress on the quality of mother–
infant interactions and on gene expression
and neurodevelopment. In bonnet
macaques, restricted access to food is a
stressor that greatly impairs mother–infant
interactions, which in turn increases stress
reactivity in the adolescent offspring,
reflecting an enduring effect of parental
care106. Likewise, in rodents, the frequency
of licking and grooming of pups by the
mother is diminished by chronic stress
imposed during pregnancy107,108. Variations
in the frequency of licking and grooming
of rat pups are associated with changes in
the neural systems that regulate behavioural
and HPA responses to stress in
adulthood (FiG. 1). The HPA response to
stress in mammals is largely mediated by
the release of CRF from the hypothalamus,
which is under negative feedback control
from glucocorticoids, in part through the
activation of glucocorticoid receptors in the
hippocampus. The adult offspring of dams
that exhibit high licking and grooming of
pups show increased hippocampal glucocorticoid
receptor expression, decreased
hypothalamic CRF levels and more modest
HPA responses to stress compared with
the offspring of dams that exhibit low licking
and grooming109–113. Adult offspring
of mothers that exhibit high licking and
grooming also have enhanced expression
of genes for GAbAA (γ-aminobutyric acid
type A) receptor subunits in the amygdala
that regulate inhibitory influences over
stress responses, rendering the animals
less fearful109,110. Cross-fostering studies
in rats have revealed direct effects of postnatal
maternal care (that is, independent
of genomic influences) on hippocampal
physiology and on the response to stress
in the adult offspring110,112. Importantly, in
rats, chronic stress during pregnancy alters
the quality of mother–infant interactions108,
reducing the frequency of pup-licking in the
dam and increasing stress reactivity in the
offspring112, and these effects can be transmitted
across generations114. These findings
recapitulate the theme that is apparent

in studies of SES and human parenting,
namely that stressful environments alter
the quality of parenting and thus,
developmental outcomes.
Studies in rats have suggested that epigenetic
mechanisms mediate the effect of
maternal care on hippocampal glucocorticoid
receptor expression. This mechanism
involves DNA methylation, which affects
chromatin structure and thereby regulates
transcription factor binding and subsequently,
gene transcription115. As adults, the
offspring of mothers that exhibit high licking
and grooming show decreased cytosine
methylation of the binding site for the
transcription factor nerve growth factorinducible
A (NGFIA, also known as EGR1)
that lies within the exon 17
promoter of
N1r3c1 (the gene that encodes the glucocorticoid
receptor in the hippocampus); this
results in increased NGFIA binding to this
promoter, increased hippocampal glucocorticoid
receptor expression and more modest
HPA responses to stress113,116,117. In humans,
child abuse is associated with increased methylation
of the exon 1F
glucocorticoid receptor
gene promoter (the homologue of exon 17
in
rats) in the hippocampus118. These findings
suggest that the effects of parental care may be
mediated through a similar epigenetic mechanism
in humans, although it remains to be
investigated whether differences in childhood
SES are associated with differences in DNA
methylation and gene expression.
Variations in maternal care in rats also
influence synaptic development in brain
regions that regulate cognitive function.
Licking and grooming of pups increases
NMDA (N-methyl-d-aspartate) receptor
levels in the hippocampus and hippocampal
expression of growth factors (brain-derived
neurotrophic factor and basic fibroblast
growth factor), which promote neuronal activation
and synaptogenesis, respectively119,120.
The adult offspring of mothers that exhibit
high licking and grooming show increased
synaptic density119,121 and a greater capacity
for synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus
and prefrontal cortex (in vivo122 or
in vitro121), and improved performance in
hippocampal and prefrontal
cortex-dependent forms of learning and
memory119,122. The effects on synaptic development
and cognitive performance are
reversed with cross-fostering119, indicating
that parental care has direct effects on neuronal
development that are consistent with
those reported in studies of cognitive
development in children.
It should be noted that although the
majority of the research described above
focuses on maternal care, particularly in animal
models, it is not necessarily the case that
in humans only mother–child interactions
influence the cognitive and emotional development
of offspring. It is likely that nurturing
and supportive care-giving by parents
of either gender or by other members of the
community is important for child development123.
The important point is that broader
social and economic context can influence
the quality of parental care, which then
influences the activity of the neural systems
that regulate stress reactivity and cognition
in offspring through the epigenetic
regulation of gene expression.

The home environment: cognitive stimulation.
SES influences the level of cognitive stimulation
in the home, as described by the family
investment model4,6. The quality of cognitive
stimulation in the home includes, but is not
limited to, factors such as the availability
of books (and other literacy resources),
computers, trips and parental communication.
Together, these factors can explain the
effects of SES on cognitive ability in children
(for example, on reading and mathematics
skills12,19,21,23,91,124,125) even when maternal IQ
has been controlled for. The effect may be
fairly specific as, in a longitudinal study, the
level of cognitive stimulation in early childhood
predicts language-related skills in
low-SES adolescents independently of
the quality of parental care and maternal
intelligence104.
Additional evidence for these effects
emerges from studies of intervention programmes
that enhance cognitive stimulation.
Such programmes buffer the effects of
low SES on cognitive development6
, boost
school readiness126 and promote academic
achievement127, even in studies in which
baseline cognitive functioning and maternal
education have been controlled for128. Such
interventions also increase self-esteem
and social competence128, and reduce
aggression129, particularly among the most
deprived children130. The key point is that
the effects of poverty on specific cognitive
outcomes can be reversed, in part, through
enhanced cognitive stimulation. Long-term
follow-up observations of the effects of early
intervention, including randomized
controlled trials, come from programmes
such as the Perry Preschool Program
(Michigan, USA), the Abecedarian Project
(North Carolina, USA) and the Chicago
Child–Parent Centers, USA. These include
increased cognitive stimulation as part of
more comprehensive intervention programmes.
Intervention programmes caused
higher scores on achievement tests, higher
levels of education and income, and lower
rates of incarceration decades after the completion
of the programmes, despite the fact
that in some studies the initial gains in IQ
disappeared131–134. Such effects suggest that
although experience at any age affects later
outcomes, early cognitive stimulation is a
particularly important determinant of later
psychological functioning.
Animal models also provide a strong
rationale for cognitive stimulation as a mediator
of SES effects on neural development.
Hebb observed that environmental complexity
during development alters a wide range of
neural functions135. Studies of environmental
enrichment in which animals are housed
under conditions that provide increased
sensory, cognitive and motor stimulation
(usually accompanied by increased social
complexity) show that enrichment upregulates
the expression of cellular signals that
are involved in activity-dependent synapse
formation. This includes factors that are
involved in glutamatergic signalling136, neurotrophins
(including insulin-like growth
factor 1, nerve growth factor, brain-derived
neurotrophic factor and glial-derived neurotrophic
factor), and synaptic proteins that
are involved in synaptic proliferation and
function137. Enrichment therefore increases
dendritic branching, gliogenesis and synaptic
density in the hippocampus and cortex, and
promotes hippocampal neurogenesis and
the integration of newly generated neurons
into functional circuits137–139. These enrichment
effects are associated with improved
performance in tests of spatial learning and
memory137. Rodents that were exposed to
adversity in early life are more sensitive
to environmental enrichment in adolescence119,136,139.
Thus, basic neuroscience
research shows how neurodevelopment
is affected by variations in cognitive
stimulation, a characteristic that often
relates to SES.

On the balloon metaphore: it’s worthless, it’s impossible to tell whether either blacks or whites reach their genetic potential. Blacks seemingly reach less of it but in absence of any direct genetic evidence, we may just as well speculates that blacks actually do have better genetic potential for intelligence. That’s what happened with the Dutch and their height, they were among the shortest Europeans in the past, now they are the tallest and there is evidence that genes play a role in their average height.

On antisemitism:

You can’t be serious, first very few American Jews are descended from holocaust survivors, holocaust survivors migrated to Israel or stayed in Europe for the larger part. And long before the massive arrival of Jews from the Russian empire, American Jews had been wealthy migrants from Western Europe. Jews in America were far from being economically and educationally oppressed in the way blacks were until the 1960s. If it was so terrible to live as a Jew in Europe or America, Jews would have converted to christianity en masse. But they didn’t. Blacks can’t convert to whiteness.

On Admixture: According to Lynn and other pioneer fund “scholars”, ethnic ancestry make little difference, black Africans have genetic IQs of 70 and Whites have IQs of 100, invariably. That’s what they say. And by this logic, blacks in South Carolina are almost pure black Africans whereas those in West Viriginia are near-mulattoes, it must have consequences in term of achievement if the hereditarian position holds water.

But the France of 400 years ago doesn’t include African immigrants or their children: it includes legitimate French natives, ethnic French people. Your ethnicity is from Africa, most likely, not France. You meant to say that your nationality (birthplace) is in France. The two are not equivalent.

The France of 400 years ago was a country with a hundred of dialects and where people’s only common identity was being subjected to the Kings of France and followers of the Catholic Church. A 1600s Frenchman who’d immigrate in 2017’s would appear as equally foreign as an immigrant from Africa. And by the way, I’m not From Africa. You don’t know me so don’t try to teach me who I am. Thank you.

You just demonstrated an example of anti-Semitism.

My fiancée is Jewish, so please… The history of the Jews in banking is true, your own link says so.

“In the Middle Ages, Jews were ostracized from most professions by the Christian Church and the guilds and were pushed into marginal occupations considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and moneylending. At the same time, Church law and rulings prohibited Christians from charging interest. For instance, the Third Council of the Lateran of 1179 threatened excommunication for any Christian lending money at interest. People who wanted or needed to borrow money thus often turned to Jews. This was said to show Jews were insolent, greedy usurers. Natural tensions between creditors and debtors were added to social, political, religious, and economic strains.”

This is why matched for IQ Blacks frequently have a better outcome profile than Whites. For example, matched for IQ, Blacks are more educated than Whites

No, it just tells that IQ doesn’t assesses the actual potential of blacks as accurately as it assesses that of whites.

On the trump/clinton voters poll:

It’s completely different, this poll asks people about their own feelings about their own beliefs, which only requires basic self-awareness. Whereas the poll you brought up asks people’s feelings on other’s beliefs which leaves room for a lot of subjective interpretation.

Charles Murray has a 2006 paper I believe in which he agrees with Flynn and Dickens that the gap has narrowed. But Rushton and Jensen (2010) disagree and show that no dent has been made in the 1-1.2 SD gap in IQ between blacks and whites. I’ll link the papers later.

So, try to reverse the findings: People with genetics for small volume and low grey matter thickness tend to be the ones living under poverty.
See how tendencious it is to give a cause & consequence relationship to a correlation?
This is just intelextually dishonest.

Malnutrition also leads to lower IQ and antisocial behavior. 1) the highest rates of obesity are found in populations with the lowest incomes and education; 2) an inverse relationship between energy density and energy cost; 3) sweets and fats have higher energy density and are more palatable; and 4) poverty and food insecurity are associated with lower food expenditures, lower fruit and vegetable intake, and lower-quality diet (Drewnowski and Specter, 2004).

I’m not saying that all groups are equal but it’s ignorant to deny how environmental factors influence development. It’s intellectually dishonest to deny the effects of deleterious environments on brain growth and social behavior and how the two interact with each other.

People with genetics for small volume and low grey matter thickness tend to be the ones living under poverty.

Except your genetic hypothesis is an ad hoc explanation that relies on no empirical finding. On the contrary, the causal role of poverty has been empirically demonstrated by animal research and intervention programs.

RaceRealist and Afrosapiens.
Show me a study where someone who was born in a non-poverty environment grows in a poverty one and vice-versa, then you can find Causation effects.
Until then, every single example you posted is about Correlation, and again, you guys (or the researchers, for that matter) trying to input Causation on them IS intelectually dishonest.
I’m not even saying things are all genetics, or that the environment will change nothing, but that you guys really don’t have the right to spin things like you want.

1) people who are food insecure are deficient in certain nutrients that aid in brain growth. 2) the same lack of nutrients cause antisocial behavior. 3) ameliorating the effect should reduce antisocial behavior and some negative brain size/IQ gains. Therefore, it is causal.

I’ll get papers for you this afternoon. However you don’t need studies for everything. You only need to know basic logic and how to deduce conclusions logically from available data which is what I did.

Also re correlations: think about that in regards to IQ. Mostly all correlations, hardly anything causal. Psychologists love correlations, especially for the g factor and things of that nature. It there isn’t even a theory of individual intelligence differences, nor is there a theory of the physiological basis of g. Even then if physiologists were to study it they wouldn’t rank it. Rankings traits is what psychologists do. Psychologists should stay in their lane with their psychological construct and not attempt to make something a physiological reality without a theory or an actual basis for g in physiology. Psychologists love venturing in to fields where they have no business.

So yea… Speaking about correlations, apply that same logic to IQ tests.

The present study demonstrated neuroanatomical correlates of the income-achievement gap. Adolescents from higher-income backgrounds, who had higher standardized test scores than adolescents from lower-income backgrounds, exhibited greater cortical thickness in all lobes of the brain. Although the income groups differed in cortical thickness, they did not differ in cortical surface area, cortical white-matter volume, or patterns of cortical thickness. Better performance on academic-achievement tests was associated with greater thickness throughout posterior cortices. Differences in cortical thickness could account for almost half of the income-achievement gap in this sample. Relationships between cortical thickness and test scores were driven in part by differences in family income. The lower-income group had a larger proportion of racial and ethnic minorities, as characterizes lower-SES groups in the United States, but neither race nor ethnicity explained significant variance in cortical thickness in the regions that differed significantly between income groups

“Are you saying that environmental factors, such as food insecurity, have nothing to do with brain size?”
I don’t think that is what is being claimed, but I don’t speak on his behalf: that’s just my interpretation. I think the point is that a blank slate of equivalence, when it comes to genetic variation, is an untenable position. A proportion of the variance of some trait ‘x’ can be attributed to both the environment and the genes, because organisms are just that: genes expressed in environments. Obviously, environments vary and this has its effects. Genes also vary and this, too, has its effects. Jews, for example, are susceptible to diseases like Tay-Sachs, which I, as a non-Ashkenazi person, am not (generally speaking, considering a sample of Ashkenazi Jews and my group).
Just concerned with iron deficiencies, it has been extensively documented. Here is a comprehensive analysis of its effects on cognitive capability in children (if it already hasn’t been cited): http://jn.nutrition.org/content/131/2/649S.full.pdf+html.
However, around the mid-80’s, there was a dip in the prevalence of iron deficiency in blacks toddlers in the US. Even considering this, it is not accurate to claim that iron deficiencies and other environmental causes fully explain the entirety of any differences regarding a trait because this presupposes a blank slate argument: that humans, as organisms, are only products of their immediate environment with no capability to pass down any unique genetic information (and that environmental effects on the generations prior are, essentially, irrelevant).

Jews, for example, are susceptible to diseases like Tay-Sachs, which I, as a non-Ashkenazi person, am not (generally speaking, considering a sample of Ashkenazi Jews and my group).

It’s completely different, Tay-sachs is caused by Mendelian inheritance, it will only affect Jews who carry the harmful alleles and this independently of any environmental factor.

However, around the mid-80’s, there was a dip in the prevalence of iron deficiency in blacks toddlers in the US.

Blacks still suffer much more iron deficiency and anemia than whites, especially during pregnancy.

Even considering this, it is not accurate to claim that iron deficiencies and other environmental causes fully explain the entirety of any differences

It depends on which differences, environment can explain the entirety of between group variation and none of the within group variation. See the infographics above.

In the real world, we know that 1) No trait is uniquely under genetic influence and 2) Different groups are exposed to different environmental factors. I could also add 3) Genetic differences between groups are too small to result in high differences on highly polygenic traits under strong environmental influence

So going by Occam’s Razor, genetic causes of group differences can safely be dismissed unless we empirically prove the underlying genetic process.

“It’s completely different, Tay-sachs is caused by Mendelian inheritance, it will only affect Jews who carry the harmful alleles and this independently of any environmental factor.”

That’s why, prior to the statement, I said: Genes also vary and this, too, has its effects. If both the mother and father are carriers and unaffected, then there is a 50% chance the children will be just as they are (unaffected, carriers), a 25% chance they won’t carry it or be affected, and a 25% chance they will both carry it and be affected (i.e. an autosomal recessive pattern). It will vary, so to speak. I wasn’t making an assertion on behalf of environmental influences if you’d included the sentence before, concerned with genes.

“Blacks still suffer much more iron deficiency and anemia than whites, especially during pregnancy.”

I’ve already demonstrated that the gap, as of the turn of the century, has been significantly reduced in toddlers who are black. It wasn’t as pronounced in the 70’s, and there are still blacks who are alive from that time period. The position does not have any impact today. If what you mean ‘during pregnancy’ is to reference the fetus, then I’m not sure. It doesn’t carry over once the child is birthed, otherwise a load of other defects follow. If you mean to reference the mother who IS pregnant, then it’s obviously true (if you are included anemia, which blacks are more prone to). It is also true for Mexican-American women, too (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5140a1.htm): “The prevalence of iron deficiency was approximately two times higher among non-Hispanic black and Mexican-American females (19%–22%) than among non-Hispanic white females (10%).”

“It depends on which differences, environment can explain the entirety of between group variation and none of the within group variation. See the infographics above.”

The flower image relating to heritability simply shows that there is a degree to which the environment (i.e. poor soil) affects the variation in height. This tells you nothing of the genetic causes in height variation. It just shows that the “100%” heritability is inaccurate. It is demonstrably untrue that the environment explains all the variation, such a proposition requires an assumption that all niches are created equal for organisms with no differences.

“In the real world, we know that 1) No trait is uniquely under genetic influence”

If by unique, you mean entirely, then that is true, as I’ve stated above.

“2) Different groups are exposed to different environmental factors.”

Yes. It is fallacious to presuppose that any and all variation is solely dependent on said factors and only those factors, as, like I’ve said above, cases for special pleading are dismissed and the heritability of IQ has already been demonstrated.

“3) Genetic differences between groups are too small to result in high differences on highly polygenic traits under strong environmental influence”

“Only a small admixture of extra variation distinguishes races from each other. That is all correct. What is not correct is the [inference] that race is therefore a meaningless concept.”

The ‘too small’ is either put in a deliberately narrow context, or the original context is denied altogether.
For example, it is already clear that these ‘small differences’ have some quantifiable effect on the brain, even in terms of mapping it: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900671-5.
It is the same small differences in genes, like substitutions, which lead to results like Tay-Sachs. From the wiki:

“A four base pair insertion in exon 11 (1278insTATC) results in an altered reading frame for the HEXA gene. This mutation is the most prevalent mutation in the Ashkenazi Jewish population, and leads to the infantile form of Tay–Sachs disease.”

Differences in genes being ‘too small’ isn’t really an argument, as racial creationism isn’t a tenable position and ‘small changes’ often lead to large conclusions. In a very generalized sense, we are all basically the same. There isn’t really a difference between me and an Ashkenazi Jew. It’s discounting nuance and specifics.
For example, from: http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/PifferIntelligence2015.pdf.
Only from examining 9 IQ-related gene variants. Of course, gene-interaction is also a possibility, although it is exceptionally difficult to examine properly. Then again, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

That’s why, prior to the statement, I said: Genes also vary and this, too, has its effects.

You seemed to use Tay-Sachs as an example of how race could cause genetic differences in disease. I explained that Tay-Sachs is not due to being jews, it’s due to carrying a specific mutation that happens to be more common among jews. And Tay-Sachs is not a polygenic trait, there is no normal variation on a “Tay-Sachs spectrum”, you have it or you don’t: it’s black or white.

I’ve already demonstrated that the gap, as of the turn of the century, has been significantly reduced in toddlers who are black…

1) You demonstrated nothing.
2) You said a gap in iron defficiency narrowed in the 80s. Fine, so did the the math achievement gap:

The gap was reduced by about one third, 2004 blacks perform at the level of 1982 whites and blacks increased their scores by 20% between 1973 and 2004.

It doesn’t carry over once the child is birthed, otherwise a load of other defects follow.

Prenatal conditions have huge effects on later development, and blacks still have much higher infant mortality and stillbirth and birth defects rates than whites. We have 80% of our brain at birth, prenatal conditions have a large impact on brain development. The baby of an iron-deficient woman is iron deficient too.

The flower image relating to heritability simply shows that there is a degree to which the environment (i.e. poor soil) affects the variation in height.

I actually believe there are blog entries on this very blog that address this old canard. Just a quick search

It is not an “old canard”. When a trait is highly polygenic and when we know ancestry accounts for a small share of genetic variance, it leaves little room for genetic differences on such traits. Race is tied to natural selection which acts on few genes of large effect that reach fixation in a population, and whose effects are mostly independent from environment, complex traits like IQ or height follow a completely inverse pattern. By Occam’s Razor, we can safely assume that the two are unrelated as they evolved differently.

For example, it is already clear that these ‘small differences’ have some quantifiable effect on the brain, even in terms of mapping it:

Now you’d need to demonstrate how this ancestry-related differences affect cognition and behavior.

It is the same small differences in genes, like substitutions, which lead to results like Tay-Sachs. From the wiki:

This is not a small difference!

Only from examining 9 IQ-related gene variants.

1) these variants were related to years of education, which I told you was more dependent on self-discipline than IQ. So these genes may just as well cause self-discipline.

2)It’s absolutely impossible to extrapolate a phenotype from 9 genes of negligible effect.

Could you please separate your text into paragraphs so that I don’t have to edit your comments? Also, I’d like that you write shorter comments and avoid accusations of fallacy when the main issue is your misunderstanding of the things we’re talking about.

“You seemed to use Tay-Sachs as an example of how race could cause genetic differences in disease. I explained that Tay-Sachs is not due to being jews, it’s due to carrying a specific mutation that happens to be more common among jews. And Tay-Sachs is not a polygenic trait, there is no normal variation on a “Tay-Sachs spectrum”, you have it or you don’t: it’s black or white.”
No: I used Tay-Sachs as an example of different rates of suffering. Race doesn’t ’cause’ it, you don’t automatically get Tay-Sachs because you’re Jewish. Putting words in my mouth won’t help your argument. I’m stating that there is a different degree of acquisition. Hereditary diseases, like haemophilia, affect anybody who carries it. It is also possible for a mutation to occur, which would also cause it. Pointing out how Jews are more at-risk for certain hereditary disease doesn’t mean they get those diseases because they are just Jews: it’s because they inherited it. By the way, it isn’t black or white. You can carry the mutation without having it be expressed. In that way, you can have it and not have it, too.

“You demonstrated nothing.”
“In 2002, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an iron deficiency prevalence of 7% for children 1 to 2 years old from all income levels, whereas the prevalence of iron deficiency was 17% for 1- to 2-year-old Mexican American children and 12% for 1- to 2-year-old children in low-income households. In the United States, the prevalence of iron deficiency was found to be 6% among white toddlers, 8% among black toddlers, and 17% among Mexican American toddlers in another study. An iron deficiency prevalence of 20% has been found among overweight children 1 to 3 years old in the United States.”
“In Hispanic and white children 1 to 3 years old, there was no significant change in iron deficiency prevalence between NHANES II and IV, but the prevalence decreased among black toddlers from 16% to 6% (P = .006) (Figure 3). In each NHANES wave, racial/ethnic disparities in iron deficiency prevalence persisted between Hispanic and white toddlers, with a disparity ratio of about 2 during all 26 years (P < .03) (Figure 3). In contrast, black toddlers experienced a sharp decline in iron deficiency prevalence over time.”

“You said a gap in iron defficiency narrowed in the 80s. Fine, so did the the math achievement gap:”
The difference was roughly equalized by the turn of the century in toddlers, 1-3. Your chart is examining children aged 9 years of age from ’73 to ’04. Toddlers 1-3 in 1999-2002 would be, at the oldest, 6 years old in 2004 (if a toddler was born in 1998 to be 1 year old in 1999, when the black iron deficiency dip in toddlers was studied). It isn’t really applicable because the 9 year olds would be born prior to the examined iron deficiency equalization, while the gap was still great even though the math scale scores were narrowing.

“Prenatal conditions have huge effects on later development, and blacks still have much higher infant mortality and stillbirth and birth defects rates than whites.”
This is a self-refuting point: if prenatal defects, which, in turn, lead to lower achievement in the offspring, exist in greater rates leading to fetal death and ‘stillbirths’, then this will “prune the physically and mentally weak [and] can, in principle, raise a population’s IQ”.
Also, you’ll have to demonstrate that this disparity is on a large enough scale to explain the observed gaps. To my knowledge, these studies aren’t only going after Rhodes scholars who are white and blacks who suffer from FAS.

“We have 80% of our brain at birth, prenatal conditions have a large impact on brain development”
I’m sure they do. Blacks aren’t the only ones who suffer from these defects.
From: https://z139.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/the-facts-that-need-to-be-explained/, section F., subsection f): “Differences are g-selective. Blacks are depressed in neither weight nor height; Nor in rote memory; nor in psychomotor ability (e.g., reactivity to sensory stimulation and coordination; see: Haiback et al., 2011). And yet, it is empirically established that many of these influences (e.g., lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, malnutrition, etc.) affect memory and psychomotor ability.”

“The baby of an iron-deficient woman is iron deficient too.”
From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4277007/.
Those kids would also die, too, if they had low enough iron levels.
“This systematic review provides up-to-date coverage of published studies examining the relation between anemia during childhood and subsequent death, incorporating information on nearly 12,000 children from six African countries. Our pooled finding revealed that, for each unit increase in Hb, the risk of child death falls by 24% (95% CI 7%–38%). This finding has far-reaching implications regarding the prevention of child mortality. In 2012, there were 48 deaths per 1000 live births among children under five (both anemic and non-anemic), with 44 percent of these occurring in the first 28 days of life.”

“It tells absolutely nothing about group differences.”
Yeah, duh. If I’m examining the heritability of height in an Asian population, what does that tell me about the causes of variation in height attributable to genes for an Amerindian population? The two groups aren’t equivalent to one another. Ironically, extending your own ‘small enough’ differences, it actually should be extendable.

“When a trait is highly polygenic and when we know ancestry accounts for a small share of genetic variance, it leaves little room for genetic differences on such traits”
Why did you leave out the response, you cut off my quotation right as I linked to the counter-argument. You are just repeating yourself, making a circular talking point. Actually respond to the points I quoted from this very blog directly instead of talking around them.

“Race is tied to natural selection which acts on few genes of large effect that reach fixation in a population, and whose effects are mostly independent from environment, complex traits like IQ or height follow a completely inverse pattern. ”
Assuming the conclusion in order to explain the cause: because ‘complex traits like IQ or height’ are dependent on the environment, then the cause for this is because they are dependent on the environment. It’s a circular argument. It is true that IQ and height are dependent on environmental causes, but assigning the entirety of the variation to the environment is neither supported by the evidence, applicable to populations who do not have the defects to a degree of relevance, nor logically sound (considering it is inferring evidence of absence from absence of evidence).

“By Occam’s Razor”
Do you even know what Occam’s razor is? It is a suggestion, not an absolute rule. Utilizing Occam’s razor invalidates our entire existence and survival. It assumes an infinite amount of futures to be fulfilled. But we exist, in the midst of all other variables and the probability of our non-existence (for your ancestor to breed successfully, and so on, for many generations).

“Now you’d need to demonstrate how this ancestry-related differences affect cognition and behavior.”
That wasn’t the point, it was to reference that the assertion that these differences follow the special pleading case in regards to the brain is not true.

“This is not a small difference!”
It absolutely is a small difference if the ‘small differences’ between races are to be considered inconsequential. What is a tiny difference of base pairs, it isn’t like a difference can be catastrophic or yield vastly different results? This is sarcasm, if you didn’t notice. From the wiki: By 2000, more than 100 different mutations had been identified in the human HEXA gene.[12] These mutations have included single base insertions and deletions, splice phase mutations, missense mutations, and other more complex patterns. Each of these mutations alters the gene’s protein product (i.e., the enzyme), sometimes severely inhibiting its function.
It isn’t just a substitution, I should have also included the insertions/deletions, too.

“These variants were related to years of education, which I told you was more dependent on self-discipline than IQ. So these genes may just as well cause self-discipline.”
“It’s absolutely impossible to extrapolate a phenotype from 9 genes of negligible effect.”
So, if I understand this self-refuting statement you’ve just made, the same genes that ‘may just as well cause self-discipline’ which you, in previous comments, argued were, and I quote, “motivation and self-discipline outdo IQ when it comes to school achievment and therefore, career prospects” are, at the same time, a ‘negligible effect’? Then why cite a study examining ‘self-discipline and motivation’ if the same metrics are simultaneously amount to increasing a negligible metric?

“Could you please separate your text into paragraphs so that I don’t have to edit your comments?”
What do you mean, I’ve been doing that all along. I put your comment in quotations, then type my response, then separate with a double-space.

You can carry the mutation without having it be expressed. In that way, you can have it and not have it, too.

No, being a healthy carrier is different from being sick. Hence it’s black or white.

This is a self-refuting point: if prenatal defects, which, in turn, lead to lower achievement in the offspring, exist in greater rates leading to fetal death and ‘stillbirths’, then this will “prune the physically and mentally weak [and] can, in principle, raise a population’s IQ”.

Nothing self-refuting, a high mortality rate in newborns and infants indicates poorer health among surviving children too. It’s nothing like a purifying process by which the death of the sick results in the survival of exceptionally fit individuals.

The difference was roughly equalized by the turn of the century in toddlers, 1-3. Your chart is examining children aged 9 years of age from ’73 to ’04.

My point was not to say that the iron deficiency gap caused a decrease in the math ability gap, the prevalence among blacks was too low to account for a meaningful amount of the difference. However, in the aggregate, the improvement of many environmental variables between the 70s and the 2000s is associated to a reduction in the cognitive ability gap. Contrary to HBD’s allegation that the gaps are stable in spite of environmental change.

Ironically, extending your own ‘small enough’ differences, it actually should be extendable.

No.

Actually respond to the points I quoted from this very blog directly instead of talking around them.

Tone it down. I responded directly. Ancestry can have large consequences when it comes to alleles with high effect size, much less with complex polygenic traits. Nothing to add.

Assuming the conclusion in order to explain the cause: because ‘complex traits like IQ or height’ are dependent on the environment, then the cause for this is because they are dependent on the environment.

I didn’t only talk about environment, I talked about a different genetic architecture indicating different evolution.

applicable to populations who do not have the defects to a degree of relevance

What do you know about the degree of relevance of defects?

Do you even know what Occam’s razor is?

Yes.

It is a suggestion, not an absolute rule.

Yes, and it prevents from engaging in fallacious reasoning. For instance when we see an association between trait X and environment Y, Occam’s razor says environment Y causes trait X. Thinking genotype Z causes people with trait X to find themselves in environment Y is a fallacious baseless ad hoc explanation unless we have demonstrated the reality of genotype Z. As long as genotype Z is just speculative, you may just as well replace it by God, Vishnu or Santa Claus, and this is creationism in pseudo-Darwinian clothes.

It absolutely is a small difference if the ‘small differences’ between races are to be considered inconsequential.

By small differences between, I’m talking about small differences in allele frequency which are indeed small between races. When it comes to specific traits, the relevance of any variant depends on the mechanism of inheritance of a given trait and the effect size of the alleles. Tay-Sachs related genotypes have large consequences and are not a small difference.

So, if I understand this self-refuting statement you’ve just made, the same genes that ‘may just as well cause self-discipline’ which you, in previous comments, argued were, and I quote, “motivation and self-discipline outdo IQ when it comes to school achievment and therefore, career prospects” are, at the same time, a ‘negligible effect’?

Nothing self-refuting again. The only empirically proven association found with these alleles is with education, which is better predicted by self discipline than by IQ so there is no reason to say these alleles are IQ alleles. Moreover, these alleles do have negligible effect size and 9 alleles do not allow to predict how many years of education an individual will complete.

“and avoid accusations of fallacy”
So stop committing fallacies. Your entire premise rests on a sociologist’s fallacy when you state: complex traits like IQ or height follow a completely inverse pattern (of environmental dependence while discounting genetic variation, which has been demonstrated, whereas massive epidemics of infant mortality due to iron deficiency in black populations has not and, conversely, could, in principle, increase the IQ).
It is also hypocritical of you to dismiss my usage of terminology when it comes to philosophical analyses while you can misrepresent Occam’s razor. Again, using Occam’s razor, the only conclusion is a likelihood, not a certainty. Arguing that the improbable is not as likely, therefore it can be dismissed (which is exactly what you state: can safely be dismissed unless we empirically prove the underlying genetic process) is an argument from personal incredulity. Simply because you deem something improbable does not mean it is non-existent, and presupposing the absence of evidence as evidence of absence (in terms of the ‘underlying genetic process’) is also a non-argument.
We haven’t properly examined the causes of homosexuality in that we have yet to find the gene-gene interaction/relevant gene(s) in question which affect, say, hormonal production. It does not follow that you can logically claim homosexuality as completely outside of genetic causes simply because you have not found them: the position to maintain is an agnostic one.

Arguing that the improbable is not as likely, therefore it can be dismissed (which is exactly what you state: can safely be dismissed unless we empirically prove the underlying genetic process) is an argument from personal incredulity.

No, it simply means it’s not a good direction for research and that more obvious causal relationships have to be investigated first, that’s why I bring up Occam’s razor which favors the simplest explanation.

“No, being a healthy carrier is different from being sick. Hence it’s black or white.”
I never said it was equivalent to being sick. My statement is right there, I said: By the way, it isn’t black or white. You can carry the mutation without having it be expressed. In that way, you can have it and not have it, too.
The value of a mate drops significantly if they are carriers. I never said it is the equivalent of being affected, but that their status impacts their potential offspring, so potential mates will be aware of this fact.

“Nothing self-refuting”
It actually is, if such unsubstantiated epidemics exist, then they also cull the population. At least, if it is as widespread as you purport (even though Mexican-Americans also suffer from iron deficiencies…).

“My point was not to say that the iron deficiency gap caused a decrease in the math ability gap”
Your own words: You said a gap in iron defficiency narrowed in the 80s. Fine, so did the the math achievement gap.
That is exactly what you meant. What else were you implying, if you meant to state that other variables were also accounted for, why not mention them to begin with instead of alluding to an impossibility?

“However, in the aggregate, the improvement of many environmental variables between the 70s and the 2000s is associated to a reduction in the cognitive ability gap. Contrary to HBD’s allegation that the gaps are stable in spite of environmental change.”
Another self-refuting point. Many ‘environmental variables’ have simultaneously been improved and disproved while blacks can still appeal to a racist conspiracy theory to arbitrarily assign moral judgement in the face of literally any disparity. Don’t get a mortgage loan, it’s because they were racist. Nothing to do with default rates, it has to do with an unfalsifiable conspiracy. Be more specific, what variables are you referencing.
Again, this does rely on the conflation of environmentability and heritability. It is actually expected that changing an environment will have an effect.

“No.”
Yes, actually. I said “If I’m examining the heritability of height in an Asian population, what does that tell me about the causes of variation in height attributable to genes for an Amerindian population? The two groups aren’t equivalent to one another.”
However, if such group differences are, as you state, “Genetic differences between groups are too small”, then there will be no issue seeing as how the groups don’t vary as much as thought.

“Only a small admixture of extra variation distinguishes races from each other. That is all correct. What is not correct is the [inference] that race is therefore a meaningless concept.”
You did not respond to the points raised by the entries. Dismissing any group differences because of the existence polygenetic interactions determining traits presupposes that such interactions within and between groups must be equivalent.

“I talked about a different genetic architecture indicating different evolution.”
Yeah, and that will have impact how genes interact with one another. Groups aren’t carbon copies. Again, if you included the quote from this very blog: because it’s HOW THOSE DIFFERENCES IN GENES ARE EXPRESSED, and NOT the differences between them.

“What do you know about the degree of relevance of defects?”
Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat. You’re the one appealing to its significance, alluding to some massive epidemic being expressed in such a way, not me.

“Yes.”
We will see why this is not the case.

“For instance when we see an association between trait X and environment Y, Occam’s razor says environment Y causes trait X. ”
This is a very old misunderstanding of how the ‘environment’ or ‘genes’ affect a certain trait. Because the environment can impact the VARIATION a certain trait has does not mean the environment causes such a trait. A heritability or environmentability doesn’t mean that “height is 50/50 genetic/environmental”. This is referencing how an individual can have “trait ‘x’ be caused by environment ‘y'”, which is not how the concept works. The environment can cause a variation in some trait, but that does not necessarily mean that it is attributable to said environment, as a cause. Just because height is heritable does not mean it is ‘80% caused by genes’, it means the variation is.

“Thinking genotype Z causes people with trait X to find themselves in environment Y is a fallacious baseless ad hoc explanation unless we have demonstrated the reality of genotype Z.”
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Again, an ad hoc rationalization is brought up in response to a counter-argument: the assertion that the variation in IQ is, to a degree, caused by genes is the central premise, not the rationalization. That’s not what an ad hoc fallacy means.

“As long as genotype Z is just speculative, you may just as well replace it by God, Vishnu or Santa Claus, and this is creationism in pseudo-Darwinian clothes.”
As long as environment Z is just speculative, you may just as well replace it by God, Vishnu or Santa Claus, and this is creationism in pseudo-Darwinian clothes.
Without actually demonstrating how said depressions and defects occur on a wide-enough scale and are present in today’s population, you cannot extrapolate its potentiality and apply it to a reality. Yes, iron deficiency can depress IQ, this is true. But does it? I’ve already linked you to a study showing the decrease of iron deficiency in toddlers, and how Mexican-Americans and black women are at-risk for being anemic.

“When it comes to specific traits, the relevance of any variant depends on the mechanism of inheritance of a given trait and the effect size of the alleles. Tay-Sachs related genotypes have large consequences and are not a small difference.”
Similar to examining only 9 gene variants, which did also have large impacts. “Piffer used data on all nine of these gene variants to assign people a “polygenic score”. This polygenic score had an astoundingly high correlation of .93 with a nation’s mean IQ in a sample of 23 countries.”

“The only empirically proven association found with these alleles is with education, which is better predicted by self discipline than by IQ so there is no reason to say these alleles are IQ alleles”
But that’s not what was examined, it was with the mean IQ, not education. IQ is not equivalent to education, but you can IQ as a proxy. You can also use the attendance rates, but that is not really relevant. It’s like stating that if you don’t eat, you will die of starvation. Of course if you don’t bother to show up to class, your IQ is irrelevant. The point of contention is in regards to the ability once the people are in the classroom.

“Moreover, these alleles do have negligible effect size and 9 alleles”
They obviously didn’t, and this was just 9. Below are some examinations on the topic, as well as admixture.

“do not allow to predict how many years of education an individual will complete.”
Yes, if the individual doesn’t choose to pursue secondary education, then it’s all for naught. But people who are more intelligent tend to be better-educated.

“There is no such thing.”https://abc102.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/the-sociologists-fallacy/
“The sociologist’s fallacy is the tendency to interpret a correlation between a social variable and a phenotype as causal, without considering that genetics could mediate the relationship.”
It does also touch into the racist conspiracy canard, too.

“No, it simply means it’s not a good direction for research”
Subjective statement. Many things were thought to be ‘settled’, but a consensus doesn’t actually determine truth in matters of science.

“and that more obvious causal relationships have to be investigated first”
Well, all the environmental impacts must explain the entirety of the gap, first. Otherwise, it’s irrelevant. Iron deficiency can depress IQ significantly. People can be born with severe mental disabilities. Is this applicable in such a way to as to explain the observed gaps? Recommend reading section F. of the ’12 blog entry I cited above regarding prenatal effects, it examines untenability of such sweeping generalizations (hence the sociologist’s fallacy, assuming absence of evidence=evidence of absence).

Would it be OK if I cross-posted this article to WriterBeat.com? There is no fee; I’m simply trying to add more content diversity for our comvmunity and I enjoyed reading your work. I’ll be sure to give you complete credit as the author. If “OK” please let me know via email.

“This essentially strikes at the heart of modern social science (and for that matter, medical science), which assumes, wrongly, that association between social and/or behavioral factors is an indication that one causes the other. In reality, genetic forces cause both. Indeed, we see this with health and lifestyle: people who exercise more have fewer/later health problems and live longer, so naturally conventional wisdom interprets this to mean that exercise leads to health and longer life, when in reality healthy people are driven to exercise and have better health due to their genes.”

All JayMan can say is that “people are driven by their genes to do X” yet he can’t point to specific genes, nor can he point to a study that says gene X drives people to do Y, both obese and lean. Hes a joke. He says diet and exercise is useless. Review my articles. JayMan is clueless here. He can appeal to genes all he wants, but lifestyle changes can and do work.

You don’t have to stay and read my blog. I tell the truth here, I don’t put up with bullshit. You can go read JayMan’s appeal to genes if you’d like. But just know he’s wrong on diet and exercise.

Read about behavioral therapy in the second article. People can change their behavior. But people like JayMan don’t want to admit that because it goes against their narrative.

I deal with people’s health every day of my life. I know what it’s like to deal with people’s health. I do more than read papers, experience is worth much more than reading a paper and drawing conclusions that you have no business drawing because you’ve never had someone’s health in your hands.

“All JayMan can say is that “people are driven by their genes to do X” yet he can’t point to specific genes, nor can he point to a study that says gene X drives people to do Y, both obese and lean”
Well, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Simply because the specific gene(s)/gene-gene interaction hasn’t been found does not discount the fact that genes do determine a proportion of an individual’s physical capabilities. You have articles on this very blog discussing the role of genes in terms of Eastern-European strongmen/weightlifters, the differences in grip strength, and muscle composition (varying between races).
That doesn’t mean anything if the person doesn’t eat at all or exercise the muscles, obviously.
Again, I don’t think the argument is actually stating that “you can do just as well simply because of your genes, full stop”, the argument is related to the role genetic differences have when expressed in an environment. Said environment is one that is physically demanding. I can exercise and work out for the rest of my life, but I will never be able to deadlift what Brian Shaw can.

Also, I think there is an issue with my commenting, my comments aren’t actually showing up. Is this because of censorship, or is this because my email account isn’t working? I can change my email to see if it will work.
If it is because of the former reason, then I find it odd how a politically incorrect blog page actively suppresses opinions contrary to the flow.

“Wrong, because the effects of deprivation, chronic stress, abuse and neglect are well documented in animal research. So the overwhelming empirical evidence shows that the causal direction is that adversity lowers intellectual functioning. Jensen’s “sociologist’s fallacy” rests on reification fallacy and is actually not accepted in mainstream science.”

Again, I repeat the point, as you didn’t address it:https://z139.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/the-sociologists-fallacy/
“Firstly, knowing that we are working with a deviational model is informative. For one, it means that a genetic explanation is tenable; for another, it means that an environmental explanation needs to account for why no or few Blacks have realized their hypothetical genetic potential relative to Whites. Our environmental hypothesis pictures Whites as balloons that have risen near to the ceiling and Blacks as balloons that are tethered to the floor. While having the same mean amount of helium and potential to rise, Blacks, it is argued, float nearer to the ground because they are held down. But by what factors? Elsewhere, we saw that the explanation is not motivation, peer effects, market discrimination, or racist attitudes. And we saw that Blacks underperform despite extensive institutional discrimination for them. Inevitably it will be argued that the IQ gap is caused by the various outcome gaps such as the income gaps. But such explanations seem queer because it’s now usually conceded that Black IQ is antecedent to Black outcomes. This is why matched for IQ Blacks frequently have a better outcome profile than Whites. For example, matched for IQ, Blacks are more educated than Whites: https://z139.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/education-by-iq-by-race.jpg
Quote: “The bachelor’s degree gap between White and Black adults was overwhelmingly due to a higher share of Black adults scoring in the lower deciles of the test score distribution. Black adults in the top two deciles were nearly 30 times as likely to obtain a Bachelor’s degree as their peers in the bottom decile….

Reducing the large academic achievement test gap between Black and White males is critical to all future efforts to close the Black-White college degree attainment gap.”

Source: The educational attainment of the nation’s young black men and their recent labor market experiences: what can be done to improve their future labor market and educational prospects

IQ is driving the education and SES gap, not education and SES the IQ gap.”

Comments are posting properly, seems that there was a glitch. Disregard the last two comments (the longer of which is awaiting moderation), they were a little bit of an experiment to test and see if my comments are working properly or not.

Well, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Simply because the specific gene(s)/gene-gene interaction hasn’t been found does not discount the fact that genes do determine a proportion of an individual’s physical capabilities

I get that. But to assert that due to genes you’ll get X due to Y is wrong, my examples being even light exercise from no exercise lowering all-cause mortality. That’s what I’m on about; there are no genes that cause going from no activity to light activity that lower all-cause mortality. JayMan is pushing very dangerous information here. I don’t disagree that genes determine physical capabilities, but when you’re talking about all-cause mortality and asserting that it doesn’t matter if you don’t sit for too long or don’t exercise, then you’re clearly wrong and letting your gene-centered ideology get the best of you in the face of logic and facts.

You have articles on this very blog discussing the role of genes in terms of Eastern-European strongmen/weightlifters, the differences in grip strength, and muscle composition (varying between races).
That doesn’t mean anything if the person doesn’t eat at all or exercise the muscles, obviously.

Correct. And the cause is muscle fibers. Muscle. Fibers are set in the second trimester and there is no change from age 6 on. You’re right that genetic differences don’t matter if one doesn’t exercise or eat right, and if people are eating wrong they a) need nutritional counseling and b) need behavioral therapy to change their habits. It works. I’ve used it.

The differences between whites and blacks in strength competitions comes down to somatype and muscle fibers.

Again, I don’t think the argument is actually stating that “you can do just as well simply because of your genes, full stop”, the argument is related to the role genetic differences have when expressed in an environment. Said environment is one that is physically demanding. I can exercise and work out for the rest of my life, but I will never be able to deadlift what Brian Shaw can.

I don’t disagree with your last sentence. He’s a freak of nature. Look at his somatype, he’s the perfect example of an endomorph just like Mark Henry. Different somas have differing amounts of power. JayMan seemed to be arguing that diet and exercise doesn’t work, which even was said in that video he linked on Twitter. That’s clearly wrong. He linked to a video saying that it doesn’t matter if you diet or exercise, it’s genetic. That’s bullshit. It clearly does matter whether you diet and exercise.

He also has misconceptions about the Look AHEAD trial. I knew that was the large RCT he was talking about and it, clearly, doesn’t mean that type II diabetics shouldn’t diet or exercise (see Annuzzi et al, 2014), this a recipe for disaster. That’s why I’m so against what he’s saying here. It does matter. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m well read on this literature. He cherry picks things to make his points while the whole literature says otherwise. I’ve never heard any obesity expert push what he’s pushing, because it’s bullshit. That’s not an appeal to authority its a fact.

And in my opinion him referring to these “laws” when someone challenges him is a huge copout. “See Law One” is a bullshit answer because he has no answer. Sure every trait is under genetic control partly, no one denies that. But to refer to it all the time, as if that’s the only answer you have when someone challenges it is intellectually dishonest.

Going from no exercise to light exercise definitely has natural effect on all-cause mortality. This is not up for debate.

Also, I think there is an issue with my commenting, my comments aren’t actually showing up. Is this because of censorship, or is this because my email account isn’t working? I can change my email to see if it will work.
If it is because of the former reason, then I find it odd how a politically incorrect blog page actively suppresses opinions contrary to the flow.

Comments don’t get censored here. WordPress acts up sometimes so if it tells you that something went wrong just hit the back button on your browser and your comment will. Still be in the box.

Does Afrosapiens have any idea of the thousands of millions of dollars that have been spent, the millions of hours of work by trained individuals that have been spent, the hundreds, if not thousands, of programs and agencies created by NGOs and government at all levels specifically to bring American blacks up to snuff?

No, and you? What I know is that blacks have made substantial improvements since the 60s. I also know that white women have been the first beneficiaries of affirmative action. Now enlighten me, show me the data on those trillion dollars spent in vain to address the issues of the black community.

Or just be honest and admit that you don’t care, that you hate the idea of closing the gaps and that one dollar spent for this purpose is always one dollar too much.

No, and you?
No, but it’s there.What I know is that blacks have made substantial improvements since the 60s.
True, and 90-99% of it because of the ending of de jure segregation.
You want to see real improvement, compare American blacks in 1865 to American black in 1965.I also know that white women have been the first beneficiaries of affirmative action.
Affirmative action should never have been applied beyond the 1st generation, beyond the actual individual that was treated unjustly.Or just be honest and admit that you don’t care, that you hate the idea of closing the gaps
Wrong! I would support spending twice, ten times the amount spent if would work.and that one dollar spent for this purpose is always one dollar too much
Yes, one dollar is too much because it will not work and creates resentment that will never be reconciled.

You want to see real improvement, compare American blacks in 1865 to American black in 1965.

No, if I want to see real improvement, I’d compare American whites across this period.

Affirmative action should never have been applied beyond the 1st generation, beyond the actual individual that was treated unjustly.

No, the effects of injustice are multi-generational. Black Americans came from generations of missed economic and educational opportunities. White women should never had been included in affirmative action as they greatly benefitted from white male priviledge.

Wrong! I would support spending twice, ten times the amount spent if would work.

Fine, my article and its references deal with things that work and directions for research on things that work. You must have enjoyed it.

Yes, one dollar is too much because it will not work

How do you know?

creates resentment that will never be reconciled.

Sounds like a personal issue.

You can choose to be part of them
And carry on the burden of white guilt to the next generations

You choose what you want to see. The progress made by white Americans between 1865 and 1965 cannot compare to the progress made by black Americans during the same time period.

Indeed, white American’s quality of life improved dramatically. It sounds like you are arguing that 100 years of indignities, extra-judicial executions and de jure white supremacy were the golden age of black Americans. Is it your own way to tell me this:
?

Probably, but there is no way to separate it out.

There is nothing to separate, race is a disadvantage per se in American society.

Chinese railroad laborers and laundry operators seemed to have figured out something.

False analogy 1) they were mostly males, in progressive western states that let them free to organize their communities, most of them went back to China. 2) Present day Chinese Americans are recent immigrants with a background in the merchant class and the upper class of Taiwan and the PRC. 3) In Hawaii, where Asians are actually the descendents of coolies, the achievement is not that impressive.

Will exist as long as there is an identifiable group “white.”

Whites can choose to be just human, or American and reject the legacy of pas injustice.

I did not read all of it in detail, you stated your conclusion in the first comment.

Criticizing things that you con’t read is extremely perilous. Yes, those differences are unlikely to be caused by genetics since substantial empirical evidence suggests a causal effect of poverty without a confounding underlying genetic factor and positive response to intervention.

Reality grounded.

Very subjective, not in line with empirical evidence

What other form can resentment take?

There is no need for resentment. You can just get over your feeling and try to figure out who has it harder and who suffers more injustice.

Not now, back then, probably.

Take the legacy, take the guilt.

Now let me repeat myself: or you can be part of a constructive effort of mutual understanding.

Five police officers were killed and seven others wounded in the ambush. It was the deadliest single incident for U.S. law enforcement since September 11, 2001. Two civilians were also hurt, the Dallas mayor’s office said.
As officials condemned the attack, details emerged about the man who died after a lengthy standoff with police in a parking garage.
Johnson told police negotiators that he was upset about recent police shootings, that he wanted to kill white people — especially white officers — and that he acted alone, the police chief said.

“Is low SES worst for black brain development than it is for white brain development. Perhaps the same? Unknown?”

None of the studies I linked or anything I read identified race as a factor of variation.

“Is the man responsible for low SES in black families? Yes, in the same sense that the man is responsible for low SES in white families.”

SES, and life in general depends on things that aren’t under one’s control and on other things that are.

You’re being intellectually lazy, you just want to believe that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. It’s a personal issue that has nothing to do with objective assessment of the available evidence.

Examples?
How widespread is it?
How common is the intentional killing of cops by black people is?

Tradition: A tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past.[1][2] Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes (like lawyers’ wigs or military officers’ spurs), but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings. Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word “tradition” itself derives from the Latin tradere literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. While it is commonly assumed that traditions have ancient history, many traditions have been invented on purpose, whether that be political or cultural, over short periods of time. Various academic disciplines also use the word in a variety of ways.

Too numerous to list? Oh show me the the most popular at least. I like rap music and I can’t tell a single song weirdly.

The fact is 135 cops died in 2016. Of them 53 died in road accidents, 2 were shot by colleagues and only 21 cops were killed in a planned attack. Even assuming the perpetrators were all black, I find it completely unusual.

“In 2013, 44 percent of cop killers were white, 37 percent were black and 11 percent were Hispanic. Last year, 54 percent were white, 26 percent were black and 18 percent were Hispanic.”

Wiki “White Americans are the racial majority. African Americans are the largest racial minority, amounting to 13.2% of the population. Hispanic and Latino Americans amount to 17.1% of the population, making up the largest ethnic minority. The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 62.6% of the nation’s total.”

A study made available this week through the journal Violence and Gender explores the 74 police officers killed in 2013 and 2014 and identifies trends among the 70 killers.

“We know that sometimes bad things happen and sometimes the police are guilty of unnecessary violence,” says study author Dr. Michael Stone. iffen:(Researchers have to put stuff in like this statement, even so, research that finds the “wrong” results can end one’s career.)

Most often, Stone found, police killings occurred when officers attempted to question or arrest the eventual killers. Stone reported that every cop killer in 2013 and 2014 was male… Half were involved in crimes just before murdering the officers, and half killed for reasons such as cop-hating beliefs or mental health conditions.

Too numerous to list. If you can’t see this 24/7 in the research community, listing thousands of examples would not persuade you. BTW, the value of all the papers that you listed earlier is compromised by the fact that very few academics and researchers will intentionally investigate questions concerning race because bad things happen to their careers when they get the “wrong” results.

SES is a wide notion, it’s about education, income, wealth, occupation, residence, family tradition, self-perception… The research on the heritability of such variables indicates low or moderate genetic influence but they tell nothing about group differences. What is well established is that opportunities for social mobility vary by race and that he has little to do with genetics.

I am sympathetic to the idea of considering ways to improve the SES of Americans. I am not sympathetic to the idea of considering the SES problem of blacks over whites. Improved SES has to be organic, it can’t be imposed arbitrarily. Giving people money does not eliminate poverty.

Implying that addressing the low SES for blacks is more important than addressing the low SES for whites and implying that the low SES of blacks is more or less completely dependent up white actions and behaviors.

Appealing for the rule of law only when it suits the purpose of black people.

Implying that addressing the low SES for blacks is more important than addressing the low SES for whites and implying that the low SES of blacks is more or less completely dependent up white actions and behaviors.

Even if we did away with the lost potential in brain power (1%, 5%?) (for blacks and whites) caused by low SES, we would only be perfecting and tweaking the further cognitive stratification of society.

“It is 10 years since France’s urban riots of 2005 promised to be the wake-up call that would force an end to the inequalities of ghetto high-rises in the suburban banlieues. That year, the death of two young boys hiding from police in an electricity substation in Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris triggered weeks of unrest on estates. France declared a state of national emergency as more than 9,000 vehicles, dozens of public buildings and businesses were set on fire. It was the sign of the hopelessness of a generation of young people stuck in dismal suburbs, marginalised and jobless because of their address, skin colour or their parents’ immigrant origins.
Now, a decade on and despite years of emergency assistance plans, the banlieues remain in crisis.”

You have worn me down and I have other things that I want to read, so I will just give my general opinion and move on.

As I stated, I don’t fret over the black underclass in preference over the white underclass. Since I am white, if crunch time comes, I will choose the white side. Blacks were denied equal opportunity until the enactment of the Civil Rights legislation in the 60’s. Very quickly, within the 1-2 generations, the gains made by the more capable blacks were there to see. In 2017, the discrepancies between the black and white underclasses are not the fault of the white race; they are inherent in the black group (99%).

I had a back and forth with RR on Head Start. Head Start has been shown to be ineffective, but continues. I argue that every child should be entitled to Head Start, it is not likely to do any damage.

An analysis of data gathered from 14 independent studies indicates that the influence of genes on intelligence varies according to people’s social class in the US, but not in Western Europe or Australia. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Research suggests that genes and environment both play a critical role in shaping a person’s intelligence. A longstanding hypothesis in the field of behavioral genetics holds that our potential intelligence, as set by our genes, is more fully expressed in environments that are supportive and nurturing, but is suppressed in conditions of poverty and disadvantages. While some studies have provided evidence supporting this hypothesis, others have not.

To better understand the impact of social class on the link between genes and intelligence, psychological scientists Elliot Tucker-Drob of the University of Texas at Austin and Timothy Bates at the University of Edinburgh conducted a meta-analysis, combining data from all available published and unpublished studies.

To be included in the meta-analysis, the studies had to contain an objective measure of intelligence and a measure of participants’ family socioeconomic status in childhood. The studies also had to include participants that varied in their genetic relatedness (i.e., siblings versus identical twins) so that the researchers would be able to statistically disentangle genetic and environmental influences.

Tucker-Drob and Bates analyzed data from a total of 24,926 pairs of twins and siblings who had participated in studies conducted in the United States, Australia, England, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The researchers found that the relationship between genes, socioeconomic status, and intelligence depended on which country the participants were from.

“The hypothesis that the genetic influence on intelligence depends on socioeconomic status was not supported in studies outside of the US,” says Tucker-Drob. “In the Netherlands, there was even evidence suggestive of the opposite effect.”

Importantly, the meta-analysis did not show any evidence that other factors — such as age of testing, whether the tests measured achievement and knowledge or intelligence, whether the tests were of a single ability or a composite cognitive measures — influenced the results.

The researchers suggest that the stark difference between the US and other countries might be explained by differences in how low socioeconomic status in experienced in the countries. That is, the relatively robust healthcare and social-welfare programs in Western Europe and Australia may buffer some of the negative environmental effects typically associated with poverty.

According to Bates, a primary question for future research will be to identify the specific aspects of a society that “break the link between social class and the expression of genetic potentials for intellectual development.”

“Once such characteristics are identified, they could inform policies directed at narrowing test score gaps and promoting all of the positive consequences of higher IQ, such as health, wealth, and progress in science, art, and technology,” he concludes.

Memory fails, it’s been a while. It’s even possible that I have confused you with and another commenter. I searched Unz, so it wasn’t there.
I don’t know how or if comments can be searched here. The only other possibility would have been at PP, but I only read and commented there for a month or so.

I argued that all children should have access to quality preschool regardless of race or class. You (?) were very adamant that since most studies showed that it was ineffective then it should be eliminated.

I must say I was momentarily amped by your declaration that there were no ghetto problems in Europe and that we could get rid of the ones in the US if we could only pry dollars out of the hands of those fat-fingered ‘Publicans and let them rain down on the heads of our picaninnies like autumn leaves. Then I remembered that this is the time of fake news and I crashed and burned when my exhilaration of worldwide kumbaya was punctured by reality.

Lol, it’s nothing like US ghettos, it’s not specifically a black problem.

Metro poitics.eu
The New French Ghettos
by Hervé Marchal & Jean-Marc Stébé & translated by Eric Rosencrantz, le 16/12/2010
Are housing projects in France – particularly the French slums euphemistically termed Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS for short) – comparable to American ghettos: i.e. enclaves of poverty resulting from geographic and ethnic segregation? While some insist there is no comparison between the two, the authors of the present article argue that current ethnic segregation processes in France are increasingly producing fully-fledged ghettos.
Conclusion
A number of French enclaves labelled ZUS, or “urban renewal zones”, suffer from multiple handicaps: geographic (functionalist architecture and urban planning, ambient decrepitude, isolation etc), socio-economic (high unemployment, large number of welfare dependents etc.), educational (large proportion of high school dropouts and remedial-year pupils etc), medical (dearth of doctors, outbreaks of forgotten diseases etc.), progressively enclosing them inside a whole array of physical, social and symbolic borders. Hence the heuristic pertinence of using “ghetto” to describe some French urban renewal zones. Ghetto is a designation that is gaining ground these days in French cities because those who dwell in urban renewal zones are a “captive” population: they really have very low odds of ever leaving their substandard social housing. So the symbolic walls around urban renewal zones turn out to be quite sturdy and every bit as impermeable as physical barriers. As François Dubet puts it (2009): The dispute over whether these neighbourhoods are ‘ghettos’ is rather pointless. They are ghettos inasmuch as the poorest of the poor and families of colonial immigrant origins are assigned to live there. They are also and above all ghettos because the rejected and the stigmatized end up identifying with the social attributes on which their rejection is based, and they themselves construct mechanisms to control their ‘turf’, their ‘girls’, some economic resources and associations, a control that accentuates their break with the surroundings.

it’s not specifically a black problem.

I try to have concern for all Americans, not just one particular race. Some people only fret about one race, but that’s not me.

Comparison is not equation, there aren’t neighborhoods in France where you hear gunshots every night, where close to half the male population is familiar with the penal justice system and that are seen as total no-go zones to outsiders. The US has the highest income inequality of any developed country, it’s a fact. I never claimed that poverty was non-existent in France but the differences are much lower and so are the levels of ethnic and economic segregation. Those poor neighborhoods are just a few housing project at the margin of big cities. They’re nothing like Detroit or East Saint-Louis which are whole cities plagued with segregation and desolation.

You (?) were very adamant that since most studies showed that it was ineffective then it should be eliminated.

I do hold that position but I don’t recall discussing it with you. I agree quality education should be given no matter what, but I don’t think one should expect any gains to hold after the program is over

In a relatively free, open and meritocratic entity where hyper-individualism and capitalism reigns supreme and a racial, religious and ethnically diverse population exists, stratification by ability will occur at both the individual and group levels and the less capable individuals and groups will end up economically and culturally impoverished; it’s a lock; bet the farm.

Lol! Another one who believes in the tale of meritocracy. There is no such thing. Success doesn’t depend on mere competence. Social networks, prejudice and access to opportunities all play a major role in individual outcomes. As far as groups, they’re just the aggregate of individuals. And France differs from America in the sense that all non-muslim groups are doomed to disappear through intermarriage. So no, there won’t be French Detroits in 100 years, just quiet Rio de Janeiros.

it has been found that americans and brits are much more likely to believe they live in an approximate meritocracy than continental europeans.

True, but it’s more an American thing though (American dream, frontier mindset, free market…) and it successfully exported itself in the rest of the anglosphere during the Reagan-Thatcher era.

The meritocracy myth is a powerful tool in support of the most ruthless forms of capitalism and individualism. Racism helped Americans drinking the Kool Aid, as black poverty and crime is a powerful “argument” against social spending and working class solidarity as well as it perpetuates the idea that status is rooted in biology, that those whites who don’t make it are probably niggers themselves, and that their racial pride is incompatible with asking assistance from the state.

And the result is here, the anglosphere has the lowest social spending, the most exploitative labor laws, the worst wealth inequality and the lowest social mobility in the developed world.

Continental Europe is under strong Christian-Democrat influence, it’s almost impossible to attack the welfare state or to make people accept US levels of inequality here.

Which is why Jamal will never read as well (no matter the billions spent) as Hosea who will never read as well as Chad who will never read as well as (insert American 1st name here) Wang who will never read as well as Ariel.